US accuses Russia of weaponising food in Ukraine war
India Today
The United States accused Russia on Thursday of weaponising food and holding grain for millions of people amid the Ukraine war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia on Thursday of weaponising food and holding grain for millions of people around the world hostage to help accomplish what its invasion of Ukraine has not -- “to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people.”
He told a UN Security Council meeting called by the United States 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 jeopardizing global food supplies.
Blinken said the meeting, which he chaired, was taking place “at a moment of unprecedented global hunger” fueled by climate change and Covid-19 “and made even worse by conflict.”
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Since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 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 United States assesses to be “a deliberate effort” to block safe passage and shut down shipping.
“As a result of the Russian government’s actions, some 20 million tons of grain sit unused in Ukrainian silos as global food supplies dwindle, prices skyrocket, causing more around the world to experience food insecurity,” Blinken said.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed as “absolutely false” claims by the US and Western nations “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.”
