Russia attacks Ukraine’s grain because they can’t hit military targets, officials say
Joel Gehrke
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Russia’s intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s granaries and other agricultural infrastructure reflect their increasing inability to make effective attacks on proper military targets, according to U.S. and European officials.
“It’s trying to say that it can strangle Ukraine’s economy, as a whole,” Ambassador James O’Brien, the State Department’s lead sanctions coordinator, told reporters Friday. “Now, why is Russia attacking these soft targets? It’s in part because it’s unable to compete with the air defense that Ukraine has developed with help from partners like the U.S. and other NATO and European allies and G-7 partners.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin scrapped the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a United Nations-brokered arrangement to ensure the maritime export of Ukrainian and Russian agricultural products, on the grounds that Russian exporters are not reaping their expected benefits. Yet Western officials see a more fundamental stratagem at work, an alternative mode of aggression to supplement the Russian military’s shortcomings.
“What we’re seeing with this intensification of Russia’s attack on soft civilian targets is a Russian recognition that time is not on its side,” O’Brien said. “What we’re seeing here is the anxious effort by Russia to try to accelerate some change in the position because its position is deteriorating.”
That analysis dovetailed with the latest assessment from Estonia, one of the only NATO allies to share a border with Russia. “It is unlikely that Russian forces will be able to make a decisive breakthrough in Ukrainian positions in the near future,” Estonian Defense Forces Col. Mart Vendla said Friday. “Therefore, they are trying to exhaust the Ukrainian economy and civilian environment with missile and drone attacks.”
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken presided over a United Nations Security Council debate about the relationship between conflict and the threat of famine, with a special emphasis on Russia’s obstruction of Ukrainian exports. Russia responded by claiming the right to strike Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure while renewing its complaint about Western sanctions.
“The prohibitions on attacking or destroying agricultural infrastructure do not apply if such facilities are used for the sustenance of armed forces or in direct support of military action,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, the lead official at the Russian mission to the United Nations, told the council on Thursday. “Unless the illegitimate obstacles (that have been artificially created by the West), which Russian economic operators face when exporting agricultural products, are eliminated, it is hardly possible to restore the normal functioning of supply chains and solve other tasks related to ensuring global food security.”
The dispute has sparked a diplomatic scramble to shift blame for rising food prices, as the Kremlin, Ukraine, and Ukraine’s Western supporters regard the countries across Africa and other parts of the developing world as geopolitical swing voters whose support can play an important role in shaping the diplomatic landscape. Polyanskiy boasted that Russia will give “25-50 thousand tons of grain free of charge in the coming months,” but the State Department officials scorned that offer as a paltry amount.
“Last year’s invasion of Ukraine caused many millions of people to be pushed into food insecurity because of rising prices and lessened availability of food,” State Department special envoy Cary Fowler, Blinken’s point man for global food security, said during the briefing with O’Brien. “It’s a drop in the bucket in terms of need and it’s a drop in the bucket in comparison with what they have taken off of the market that would have gone to those countries if they had not invaded Ukraine.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country played a key role in the lapsed Black Sea grain deal, announced Friday that his “foreign minister and intelligence head are holding talks” with Moscow about hosting Putin in August to discuss a renewal of the pact.
“And we have made clear that we’re prepared to help on any of these matters, but it’s not clear what Russia regards as success,” O’Brien said. “And here is the problem they face: Russia is exporting record amounts of grain. This past year, the Russian grain association said that the exports had reached 61.8 million tons of grain, which I believe is 10 to 15% higher than any year before. … Russia’s complaints amount to minor allegations about a system that is working very well.”
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If the attacks on Ukrainian grain infrastructure represent an attempt to “accelerate some change” in the Ukrainian or international posture toward the war, as the Western officials argued, then Russia may feel an incentive to widen its list of demands — perhaps to include economic concessions that would alleviate pressure on their defense industry.
Yet O’Brien maintained that the Kremlin would be unable to sustain that campaign. “I’m optimistic that Ukrainian grain will reach global market,” he said. “It will take us some time. It’s going to involve some costs, but we cannot allow Russia to have a stranglehold over the Black Sea. … Russia’s leverage is always something that it’ll be tested and I think will decline.”