CNN
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has just reminded the world that he has the ability to inflict pain far beyond the excruciating torment he is inflicting on Ukraine.
Russia’s suspension of a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain from a region fabled as the world’s breadbasket threatens to trigger severe food shortages in Africa and spiral prices in supermarkets in the developed world. In the United States, it represents a political risk for President Joe Biden, who is embarking on a re-election campaign and can hardly afford a rebound in the high inflation that dogged American consumers at its peak in last year.
Russia’s move appeared at first sight to be face-saving retaliation for an attack claimed by Ukraine on a bridge linking the annexed peninsula of Crimea with the Russian mainland. The bridge was a vanity project for Putin and the apparent assault represented yet another humiliation for the Russian leader in a war gone terribly wrong.
The Black Sea grain deal, agreed last year and brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, was a rare diplomatic ray of light during a war that has fractured Russia’s relations with the US and its allies and had global repercussions.
By refusing to renew it, it appears that Putin is once again trying to impose a cost on the West, in exchange for the sanctions that are strangling the Russian economy. He may reason that a food inflation crisis could help divide political support among NATO nations for the protracted and costly effort to save Ukraine. And grain shortages affecting innocent people in the developing world could add to international pressure for a negotiated end to a war that has turned into a disaster for Russia.
The United States and other Western powers reacted to Russia’s announcement that the deal had “ended” with outrage, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warning that Putin was trying to “weaponize hunger.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Russia was trying to use food as a tool in its war against Ukraine, adding that the tactic would make it “harder to find food in places that desperately need it and that prices go up… The bottom line is: it’s unthinkable. It shouldn’t happen.”
Identifying Russia as a moral transgressor might be understandable given the horror that has visited Ukraine, and may stoke fury over Putin’s move in the West and the developing world. But humanitarian arguments will not sway a Russian president who launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign neighbor and is accused of presiding over brutal war crimes.
Still, Russia’s rhetoric after canceling the deal and reactions from key players elsewhere in Eurasia suggest the deal may not be as finished as the Kremlin claims. There is a possibility that Putin sees a grain confrontation as a way to improve his terrible position.
In a clear sign of diplomatic maneuvering, Russia justified canceling the deal by saying it was not getting its share of the benefits. noting that it had faced obstacles with its own food exports. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov hinted, however, that Moscow could allow exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to return once its targets are met.
But UN Secretary-General António Guterres underlined how difficult it could be to return to the deal with a categorical repudiation of Russia’s points in a letter to Putin, arguing that under the deal trade of Russian grain had reached large export volumes and fertilizer markets were closing in. full recovery with the return of Russian products. Guterres said he had sent proposals to Russia to keep the grain deal alive, but was “deeply disappointed” that his efforts were not being heard.
The UN chief’s comments reinforced the view that, for now, Russia sees a point of leverage in refusing to renew the Black Sea grain deal. The decision comes in a complicated geopolitical context after last week’s NATO summit in which the G7 countries pledged to provide Ukraine with the means of self-defense for years to come.
It may also represent the latest chess move in a shadowy double game of high-powered geopolitics being waged by a pair of Machiavellian autocrats: Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will meet in August.
Erdogan won prestige and the thanks of his fellow NATO leaders and developing nations for negotiating the original grain deal. But he has angered Russia in recent days, despite keeping open channels with Putin during the war. It is conceivable that the Russian leader could be sending a shot across the bow of his Turkish counterpart by canceling his success.
Russia was outraged last week when Turkey sent a group of captured Ukrainian military commanders to Zelensky, despite an earlier agreement they would not return home until after the war. Erdogan also risked his relationship with Putin by abandoning his opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO, a move that significantly weakened Russia’s strategic position in Europe.
But Erdogan, who has a reputation for shrewdly playing his cards to enhance his own and Turkey’s influence, was noted to have referred to Putin as his “friend” on Monday and suggested the Russian leader might want to keep the “humanitarian bridge” of cereal exports opens.
If he could somehow engineer a return to the deal, Erdogan could re-enforce his place on the hinge of Eurasian great power politics. It would also boost its goal of emerging as a leader among the nations of the developing world and do a favor to Western leaders who fear an inflationary spike.
Michael Kimmage, who served on the State Department’s policy planning staff from 2014 to 2016 and is now a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, argues that Turkey is in a unique position because it has a considerable power within NATO, but also has strong relations with both Ukraine and Russia.
“I think it’s quite possible that even before the Putin-Erdogan meeting there will be a resumption of the grain deal because that keeps Russia in some degree of the good graces of the international community,” Kimmage said.
Reactivating the grain deal would show that Russia, in its isolation, retains some Turkish support, Kimmage added, but the episode also demonstrates to the rest of the world that “when Russia wants to, it can turn off the grain deal and be an enormous pain. in the neck in the Black Sea.”
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While the war in Ukraine has consumed Russia’s foreign policy, Moscow has also made intense efforts to carve out its own influence in Africa and elsewhere in opposition to the United States. Therefore, it may risk damaging its own priorities by causing widespread food shortages, especially since much of Ukraine’s grain is used in World Food Programs to alleviate hunger in Africa.
While the White House is nursing a sense of moral outrage over Russia’s move, it quickly dismissed another potential response: an attempt to break a Russian blockade on the Black Sea.
“This is not an option that is being actively pursued,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, said Monday in comments that were in line with Biden’s goal of avoiding any direct clash of NATO with Russia, a nuclear superpower.
While the end of the grain deal would cause significant global hardship, its worst effects may be weeks away, so there could be time for diplomacy to work.
Nicolay Gorbachov, president of the Ukrainian Grains Association, told CNN International’s Isa Soares on Monday that exports by road, rail and river could mitigate the most damaging effects of the deal’s collapse for two to three years weeks, even if these methods of transport lacked the cargo volume of ships.
But he also warned that ultimately, if Ukraine could not export its grain, “all of us, in developed countries, in developing countries, will face food inflation.”
“In my opinion, the international community, developed countries must find the lever to move Ukraine’s grain to the world market,” he said.
