Resolving Ukraine export grain crisis could be key to ending war
Farmers carry a Russian rocket fragment on a sunflower field in Donetsk region. Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the 'breadbasket of the world' and making food more expensive across the globe, threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries. Picture: AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
The world is heading towards a recession triggered by the war in Ukraine and its related sanctions, the disruption of industrial and agricultural activities in China, volatile stock markets, a slowdown in world trade, and sharp rises in inflation.
The single most negative development is the ongoing failure to export grain from Ukraine.
Twenty million tonnes of last year’s harvest will rot if they are not exported, within the next few weeks. The most expedient way to ensure its delivery is through the Port of Odesa, which is blockaded by the Russian Black Sea Fleet and mined by the Ukrainian navy.
Moreover, grain warehouses will still have to be cleared, cleaned, disinfected and fumigated before this year’s harvest can be stored.
Three weeks ago, Senegalese president Mackey Sall met Vladimir Putin in Sochi to discuss the situation. Mackey Sall is also the current chairman of the African Union, and in this capacity, represents 500m Africans.
His meeting with Putin complements French president Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to keep diplomatic channels open with Moscow and is linked to, Turkish backed, UN efforts to negotiate a safe sea corridor for ships to export the grain.
Putin said he was prepared to facilitate the movement of grain, on condition that sanctions against Russia were lifted first, and that the Ukrainian sea mines would be removed. Removing all the sea mines would take several months.
The crisis in question is as existential as it gets. Should the Ukrainian grain fail to reach the world market soon, thousands of Africans, in particular, will die of hunger, as consequential price rises will put alternate food resources beyond the reach of the poorest.
Death by hunger is not peaceful or benign. TV cameras that show listless wide eyed children, fail to capture the true horror of such a death. It is slow and extremely painful. Ask any NGO worker, missionary or peacekeeper, who has worked in a famine area.
The are many practical difficulties in exporting tens of millions of tonnes of grain abroad in a short time frame. Alternative outlets such as Romania, or elsewhere, can only handle small amount of shipping, plus the overland journeys are far too long.
The capture of Odesa has been considered by many observers to be one of Putin’s objectives in the current ‘military operation’. Initially, when the main Russian amphibious force was moved to join the Black Sea Fleet there was speculation that Russia would try a direct seaborne invasion on Odesa.
However, there were few suitable landing areas close to Odesa and the Ukrainians reacted quickly by constructing defences along the vulnerable coastal areas.
The shock sinking of the Guided Missile Cruiser, Moskva, by two Ukrainian Neptune shore-to-ship missiles, forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to withdraw well out to sea.
This move reduced the Russian ability to give missile air cover for any possible landing force in the Odesa area. Within the past week this has been compensated by Russia setting up land based surface to air missiles on Snake Island, located just 100 miles south of Odesa.
If diplomacy fails to lift the Russian blockade, should the ‘international community’ intervene? There are times when military intervention is morally justified to avoid a humanitarian disaster.
The first recourse would normally be to the UN Security Council. But the UN Security Council is largely helpless in this case as the Russians have the veto. The General Assembly?
Theoretically possible but very unlikely. NATO can only intervene if a member state is attacked.
Moreover, Nato has no naval strategic plan for the Black Sea, and non-littoral Nato navies are limited by various agreements in the number of days per year they can spend in the Black Sea.
The main proposal that the Turkish and Romanian navies could police a sea corridor has been rejected by the Ukrainians as not being sufficient to guarantee security. It seems questionable also that insurance companies covering the commercial shipping, would accept any arrangement other than full clearance of all sea mines.
The risk of sea mines coming adrift from their moorings is always present.
This leaves only two military options, the first would be a ‘coalition of the willing’, led by the US, the UK, France and Germany, with sufficient naval and air forces, if necessary, to confront Russia and break the blockade. If this happens, we will all be in a very dangerous place.
Remember; we have been there before. During the Cuban missile crisis in Oct ’62, the situation was the other way round, the USSR threatened to break the US blockade of Cuba.
On that occasion Khrushchev backed down and Kennedy was the official hero of the hour. This time around, who would blink first, Biden or Putin? In any case, it may already be too late to mount such an operation in time to save the grain.
A second course of action, equally dangerous, but quicker, would be for a ’coalition of the willing’, to blockade the Russian port of Kaliningrad, Russia’s sole access to the Baltic Sea, until Russia lifts its blockade of Odesa.
Nevertheless, while a blockade is basically an alternate way of implementing trade sanctions, it is still an act of war. If Russia were to attack a Nato member of such a coalition, Nato could then be drawn into the conflict.
Some defence analysts regard a Russia Nato war as increasingly unavoidable. In my view it is possible, but not inevitable.
On the other hand, a successful negotiated solution on the grain issue could have a positive outcome. Apart from leading to a drop in world food prices, it could create a diplomatic momentum for an internationally supervised, (UN or OSCE?) general ceasefire in the war.
This would be followed up by disengagements of forces, followed up by troop withdrawals to agreed positions in tandem with step-by-step reductions in sanctions, and finally peace talks.
