Food prices to surge after Putin chokes grain supply
BRITAIN was warned that food prices could rise even further after Vladimir Putin blocked off the supply of grain from Ukraine.
The Russian president pulled out of the UN-brokered deal after accusing the Royal Navy of helping Ukraine carry out a drone attack on its Black Sea Fleet yesterday.
The Ministry of Defence said the Kremlin was “peddling false claims” to detract from its disastrous invasion.
It came amid a report in The Mail on Sunday that Liz Truss’s mobile phone was hacked during her time as foreign secretary, in a suspected attack by Russian operatives.
The newspaper said the details were “suppressed” by Downing Street.
Although ministers are set to reassure the public that Britain’s food supply is secure, a Whitehall source warned: “Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of wheat and grain in the world. If you restrict the export of that good, the price of that good increases, and that is felt across the entire world.”
David Laborde, at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told The Sunday Telegraph that the price of wheat could rise by 10 per cent as soon as next week.
“Food is already expensive and this is going to make it more expensive,” he added.
It is understood Moscow has used the drone strikes at its Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol as justification for suspending the grain deal, once described by the UN as a “beacon of hope” that would supply poor countries with food.
“The actions of the Ukrainian armed forces, led by British specialists… mean the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships,” a spokesman for Russia said.
Only a minesweeper was damaged in the drone attack, the Russian defence ministry claimed, although unconfirmed reports said that the Admiral Markov, the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, had been hit.
A Russian spokesman also suggested for the first time that the Royal Navy was responsible for a rupture to the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea last month – a claim the UK Government described as an “invented story”.
Admiral Lord West, a former head of the Royal Navy, told The Sunday Telegraph the claim was “laughable” and that Mr Putin should “wind his neck in”.
Ukraine has accused Mr Putin of trying to blackmail the world by pulling out of the grain deal.
“The primitiveness of Russian blackmail is in everything. Nuclear blackmail, energy, food, dirty bomb fiction,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration.
James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, said: “The UN Black Sea Grain Initiative is instrumental to global food security. Russia should allow grain exports to reach the world’s hungry.”