July 21: Russia imperils global grain supplies

In which, the Ukraine war turns nasty with the summer heat, the heat turns up on the Biden scandals, and US-Israeli relations warm… It’s also summer and hot.

Russia imperils global grain supplies (again)

After Ukraine hit another bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula to Russia, Russia withdrew from its deal with Ukraine and Turkey to maintain grain exports through the Black Sea. Russia quickly followed up its withdrawal from the deal by hitting Ukrainian grain storage facilities, raising global fears of yet another spike in food prices. 

Readers will remember that Ukrainian grain exports feed large swaths of the Global South, including several of those war torn African countries I’ve been reporting on. Ukrainian grain exports were largely maintained under the now abandoned deal, but not at prewar levels for obvious reasons. Now, Ukrainian grain exports are threatened in their entirety even as civil conflict ripples across Africa along with punishing heat waves and possible crop failures. The situation in Africa could get quite bad (meaning, worse than it is already) before the year is over.

Called it! Poking the bear

In backing out of the grain deal, Russia is clearly not interested in any negotiated settlements on Ukraine at the moment, and likely thinks that with its command of the information space in the Global South, it has the diplomatic space to imperil African food imports (and worse if US intel is to be believed) without fearing blowback. Crazy world we live in.

Russia followed up its withdrawal from the deal with a dark warning to the US and its western allies to back off while it settles matters with Ukraine. 

Like I said last week, the combination of Biden sending cluster munitions to help the slow Ukrainian offensive and the growing chorus of voices calling for Ukrainian membership in NATO was not going to be received by Russia as an invitation to negotiate and end hostilities. It appears to have had the opposite effect.