Russia’s war against Ukraine, while deepening a global food crisis, has made the invader among the biggest winners of the mess it helped create. Russia has continued to ship its wheat at the now-higher price, finding willing buyers and raking in more revenues per ton. “Failure to open up the ports is a declaration of war on global food security,” David Beasley, the head of the United Nations’ World Food Program, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Monday. Russian wheat shipments for the 2021-22 season totaled 34.1m tons as of this week, down 11 percent from a year earlier, Interfax reported. “Food from the Russia perspective becomes an economic sector where it has political and economic leverage,” said Chatham House’s Benton.

Source: The North Africa Journal May 24, 2022 21:08 UTC