Commonwealth leaders, meeting for the first time in four years, discussed food security and the risk of starvation as Canada’s foreign minister tried to blame the impending crisis at Russia’s feet.
“What is clear to us is that Russia is assembling food, affecting many countries in the world and putting 50 million lives at risk,” Mélanie Joly told reporters Friday afternoon as she summarized the first day of the day. Commonwealth meeting in Kigali, Rwanda.
Ukraine is the world’s fourth largest exporter of grain and is said to have more than 30 million tons of stored grain awaiting export. Farmers are said to be building temporary silos and are worried that the summer harvest is just weeks away.
The Black Sea ports of Odessa, Pivdennyi and Mykolaiv and Chornomorsk serve as main terminals: sending about 4.5 million tonnes of grain a month, but a Russian naval blockade impedes movement.
A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington concluded that Russia is taking advantage of transportation bottlenecks to attack Ukraine’s food storage facilities.
Russian forces have attacked grain silos across the country and stolen between 400,000 and 500,000 tons of grain from the occupied regions, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
The CSIS report, published online on June 15, noted that “Russia destroyed one of Europe’s largest food storage facilities in Brovary, about 19 kilometers northeast of the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv “.
Journalists enter a destroyed warehouse to store food, following a Russian attack 12 days earlier in Brovary, on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 29. (Rodrigo Abd / The Associated Press)
The issue of the Russian blockade on grain exports from Ukraine will also be at the center of the G7 leaders’ meeting, starting Sunday in Germany.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week made a scathing critique of the crisis, blaming the US and not Russian military actions in Ukraine for jeopardizing food security and rising inflation and fuel prices.
He reinforced the message in a phone call last week with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was one of the Commonwealth leaders to skip this week’s meeting.
Africa depends heavily on the grain of Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Russia.
For the leaders who ran in Rwanda, Joly said Canada has been clear in blaming the crisis.
Sanctions are not to blame, Joly says
“This is not the fault of Western sanctions,” he said. “This is really Putin’s favorite war that is affecting food security around the world.”
Ten members of the Commonwealth abstained from condemning Ukraine’s invasion of Moscow in a UN resolution last spring.
Joly said he believes Canada “advanced” at the conference to convince some of these nations to stand more firmly with Ukraine, but was not specific.
At a policy session held before the Commonwealth leaders ’meeting, African countries were asked to be more self-sufficient in food supply to offset imports.
Agnes Kalibata, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), told the conference that the agricultural sector in developing countries in the Commonwealth is “very little invested”. He called for adequate funding to boost “the sector’s productivity, strengthen its resilience and cope with climate change, as well as create jobs, according to local media reports.