Russia is holding food ‘hostage’

US SECRETARY of State Antony Blinken has accused Russia of weaponising food and holding grain for millions of people around the world hostage to help ‘break the spirit of the Ukrainian people’.

He told a UN Security Council meeting called by the US that the war has halted maritime trade in large areas of the Black Sea and made the region unsafe for navigation, trapping Ukrainian agricultural exports and jeopardising global food supplies.

Mr Blinken said the meeting, which he chaired, was taking place ‘at a moment of unprecedented global hunger’ fuelled by climate change and Covid-19 ‘and made even worse by conflict’.

Since Russia’s invasion on February 24, he said, its naval operations have sought to control access to the northwestern Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and to block Ukrainian ports which the US believes is ‘a deliberate effort’ to shut down shipping.

‘As a result of the Russian government’s actions, some 20 million tonnes of grain sit unused in Ukrainian silos as global food supplies dwindle, prices skyrocket, causing more around the world to experience food insecurity,’ Mr Blinken said.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed as ‘absolutely false’ claims ‘that we want to starve everyone to death and that only you and Ukraine allegedly care about how to save the lives of the country. You assert that allegedly we are preventing agricultural products from being taken out of Ukraine by sea. The truth is that it is Ukraine and not Russia that has blocked 75 vessels from 17 states... and has mined the waterways.’

Mr Nebenzia said more than 10,000 sanctions on Russia have disrupted transportation routes. But Mr Blinken called Russia’s claims that sanctions are to blame for the worsening global food crisis false, declaring: ‘The decision to weaponise food is Moscow’s and Moscow’s alone.’