As Russia prepares for a military offensive in eastern and southern Ukraine, the United Nations warned on Saturday that the closure of Black Sea ports could cause a world food disaster which will lead to famine, mass migration and political instability.

Ukraine’s noodles are full of grain that in a normal year helps feed 400 million people worldwide. But the supply chain was disrupted due to the warwith ports that do not usually work near the center of a combat zone.

“If you take that out of the market,” David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, said in a phone call from the western city of Lviv in Ukraine, “you’ll start to realize you have a perfect storm. “.

The official was speaking at the end of a four-day visit to Ukraine to explore ways to deliver food to the approximately 1 million Ukrainians trapped in cities and other areas cut off by Russian forces and to examine the broader threat to global food markets.

The challenge of food supply within Ukraine is not complicated, he said. “We have food, we have money, give us way.”

open ports

The challenge for the global food supply is to keep open the southern ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk, Yuzhny and Mykolaiv on the Black Sea coast, which are held by Ukraine but threatened by Russia’s expected offensive.

Beasley said he spoke on the phone and wrote down his concerns, but the Kremlin did not respond to any of the UN’s concerns.

“We haven’t made any progress at all,” he said.

“This is where the international community needs to step in and make some very serious decisions about protecting ports for humanitarian purposes and opening ports for the whole world,” he added, “because the whole world will pay a price if we do ‘open t ports.

Hungry

About 45 million people in 38 countries are “knocking on the door of famine as we speak” thanks to the cumulative number of Covid-19 wars, droughts and pandemics, Beasley said.

The impact of the war in Ukraine on food and fuel prices and shipping costs seems set to increase that number and limit the UN’s ability to help them.

Operating costs for the UN food program have risen by $ 71 million per month, Beasley said. “That means we’re going to feed four to five million fewer people a year because of rising costs alone,” he added.

The short-term problem is financial, Beasley said, adding that the world’s richest nations and billionaires need to step in to close the financing gap, which is approximately $ 8 billion.

general fear

The most worrying threat is the long -term challenge to the world’s food markets. Ukrainian farmers can still produce a crop that will help feed the world’s hungry if the war is over now, he said, but not if southern ports and Black Sea shipping lanes remain closed.

Beasley said he was urging the leaders of the Group of 7 countries and other governments to return to production unused farmland to make up for the possible loss of food supplies from Ukraine and Russia, but warned that shortages in the global food market and beyonddramatic moments in food prices will be disastrous for poor countries.

“You’re going to have famine, death and starvation,” he warned, “you’re going to have destabilization of different countries and you’re going to have mass migration.”

Source: The New York Times

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