(United Nations) Before the UN Security Council, Russia was accused on Tuesday of having provoked a “world food crisis” or even of putting people at risk of “famine” by having started a war against Ukraine, the “breadbasket of Europe”
Posted at 5:28 p.m.
Russian President “Vladimir Putin started this war. He created this global food crisis. And he is the one who can stop it,” hammered the number two of American diplomacy Wendy Sherman during a meeting of the Security Council devoted to the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.
“Russia and President Putin alone bear the responsibility for having waged war on Ukraine and for the consequences of this war on world food security”, insisted the Deputy Secretary of State.
The French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Rivière drove the point home by judging that “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine increased the risk of famine throughout the world”.
Invited to the Security Council, the UN’s assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Joyce Msuya, of Tanzania, warned that the conflict “threatens to make things even worse for the biggest humanitarian crises on the planet, such as in Afghanistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa”.
“These countries are already fighting against food insecurity, the fragility of their economies, the increase in food, fuel and fertilizer prices which will severely affect the current and future seasons”, she warned. .
The director of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, and Wendy Sherman recalled that Ukraine and Russia were “major producers” of cereals, representing “30% of world wheat exports, 20% of world corn and 75% sunflower oil”.
Some “50% of the grain we buy comes from Ukraine and we fed 125 million people” before the war, Mr. Beasley said, warning of the “devastating” impact that the crisis will have on WFP operations.
On Friday, the Twenty-Seven of the European Union announced an initiative to alleviate food shortages caused by the war. The EU and the United States want a multilateral commitment against restrictions on the export of agricultural raw materials.
Grain shortages likely to cause food riots are feared in the Middle East and North Africa. Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh or Nigeria, highly populated countries, are the main importers of cereals from Russia and Ukraine.