Russia Explained How the West Is Responsible for the Global Food Crisis
The present piece will summarize Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya’s main points before analyzing the bigger picture in order to bring his words to the attention of the Western audience who might not have heard his speech.
The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is propagating the false information warfare narrative that Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine is to blame for the global food crisis, implying that President Putin is a “madman” who wants to kill as many people as possible across the Global South through famine. The truth, as usual, is altogether different as articulated in detail by Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya during an event at the body’s headquarters on Thursday about this issue. The present piece will summarize his main points before analyzing the bigger picture in order to bring his words to the attention of the Western audience who might not have heard his speech.
According to him, there were already systemic problems in this sphere prior to his country’s special operation in Ukraine. These included conflicts, extreme weather phenomena, and economic perturbations. Nebenzya also cited an expert who claimed that there isn’t a physical deficit of food but issues with food distribution systems. He then added that the COVID screwed up global supply chains, after which the US-led West’s financial injections into the economy dispersed demand and whipped up inflation. The UN representative also blamed trade wars and contradictions related to agricultural market regulations, which spiked food prices and related costs.
Another major contributor to this crisis is the US-led West’s reckless transition to green energy, which was undertaken without any regard for the consequences that it would have on the price of conventional energy. The resultant surge in costs was reflected in parallel increases in fertilizer prices, which in turn prompted Western commodity speculations that also added to the spike in food prices. These factors predated Russia’s special operation and set the context within which the US-led West’s unprecedented sanctions against it directly led to the current food crisis, which Nebenzya wryly noted is being completely ignored by their representatives.
Before elaborating on this, he revealed how Kiev actively thwarts agricultural shipments from Ukraine to the Global South by blocking foreign vessels and mining waterways. He said that Russian and Belarusian agricultural and fertilizer exports could therefore naturally be of help to replace this lost supply, but the sanctions have greatly obstructed other countries’ cooperation with them. Despite there being so-called “exemptions” for these exports, Nebenzya noted how they still over-comply with the US-led West’s anti-Russian sanctions out of fear of “secondary sanctions”, which leads to considerable delays. Nevertheless, he said that Russia is still able to export agricultural and fertilizer products abroad.
It won’t supply newly designated unfriendly countries that have imposed sanctions against his own, but they’re not the ones not faced with food insecurity issues, he added. According to him, 25 million tons of grain will be available for export from Novorossiysk port as will 22 million tons of fertilizer for those who are willing and able to purchase it. It would certainly help the Global South’s food insecurity if Kiev contributed to this as well but Nebenzya then revealed that all of its exports actually go to the EU, which is eager to receive as much as possible despite literally not needing it like developing countries so desperately do nowadays.
Even more scandalously, the UN representative said that Russia believes that Kiev is exporting grain in exchange for arms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented either, he said, since Germany and Austria-Hungary occupied Ukraine during World War I on the pretext of ensuring the reliable delivery of food from that Russian region. Nebenzya then asked his Western colleagues to refute his accusations and to explain how Kiev’s grain exports to the EU contribute to resolving the global food crisis that’s disproportionately affecting developing countries and has placed 40 million more people at the risk of starvation in recent months.
Reflecting on the insight that he shared, it’s clear that the global food crisis is artificially manufactured by the US-led West, which suggests that it’s being employed as a Hybrid War weapon to catalyze political changes across those Global South states that practice a policy of principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict by refusing to condemn or sanction Russia. That just goes to show that the declining American hegemon is purposely provoking chaos across the world in a desperate attempt to give it an edge in the global systemic transition to multipolarity.
