‘The Russians want to create food shortages, like they did in Mariupol’: scene outside the Viterra terminal a grim snapshot of the worsening global food crisis
The day after a Russian missile struck a Canadian-owned vegetable oil terminal in this southern Ukrainian city, police sealed off the surrounding streets, fearing the Russians might strike it again.
“The Russians want to create food shortages, like they did in Mariupol,” said the 14-year-old, who was home at the time of the attack and shot a video of orange flames and black smoke shooting skyward. “They hit the oil refineries, they hit the grain deposits. Some of these [Viterra] tanks are still full, so maybe they’ll hit it again.”The teenager’s analysis aligns with the Kremlin’s own description of its plans.
“Russia’s aggression is impeding the global recovery and dramatically worsening energy security and access to food globally,” read the final communiqué, which included a promise to inject US$4.5-billion to combat rising food prices via a new World Bank initiative, the Global Alliance on Food Security. Nonetheless, the G7 said sanctions against Russia would remain in place “for as long as necessary.
Since the start of the war, Russia’s navy has maintained a blockade of the Black Sea, preventing Ukraine – one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat – from getting its product to market. Some 22 million tonnes that would normally be exported via Mykolaiv and other Ukrainian ports remain in storage facilities around the country. The critically needed grain will likely soon go to waste.
Ukraine has also accused Russia of seizing some 400,000 tonnes of grain from areas under occupation. It’s unclear whether the stolen grain was destined for domestic Russian consumption or would be sold internationally. The toll from the attack on the Viterra terminal could have been far worse: the facility is embedded in a residential neighbourhood, with a line of homes just 15 to 20 metres from the outer wall of the complex.“If it was not for the Russian war against Ukraine, there simply would be no shortage in the food market,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a virtual address to leaders of the African Union on June 20. From the start of the war, Mr.
Yuriy Vitrenko, the chairman of the board of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company, sees rising energy prices as part of the same pressure campaign. Russia’s relentless attacks on refineries and oil storage depots – combined with the closure of Odesa’s port and the loss of imports from Belarus, which has sided with Russia in the war – have deprived Ukraine of 98 per cent of its usual supply of oil and gas, he said.
Viterra is partially owned by Glencore, an Anglo-Swiss commodity trader that owns a 10.5-per-cent stake in En+ Group, the parent company of Russian aluminum giant Rusal. Glencore also owns a 0.57-per-cent share of Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled oil giant.
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