Ukraine has its tractors hitting mines which Russian forces have been deploying by the thousands into the crop fields. Any chance of Russia helping with that cleanup? They caused that problem. Can’t move grain if they can’t even harvest it.
When they do harvest it, they have to store it. Russia’s still blowing that infrastructure up.
Then it needs to be moved. What with? Russia nicked a shedload of vehicles, bombed the rail tracks, blew up the factory that makes grain shipping containers, blew up the processing plants.
Rusfia could reverse its course, stop blowing up the agricultural infrastructure, and solve these problems. One diktat, one decision, time to deliver 1 hour. Far quicker than expecting NATO or the USA to do it.
Or are you reckoning America needs to send big agricultural machinery to Ukraine without Russia lifting a finger? By the time it gets there, the grain will be spoiled.
I thought you guys were against America spending more of its money on unnecessarily solving problems that aren’t of its making and don’t benefit the USA. This mess is made in Russia, so get Russia to fix it.
Are you telling us Ukraine is losing the special military operation?
No, I’m saying that the quickest way to clear the instabilities in global food is for Russia to simply order its troops not to keep DELIBERATELY targeting the food production and supply chain infrastructure in Ukraine. It has said it doesn’t want to bust the Ukrainian food production industry... Well, that simplifies things. Just stop bombing and stealing it.
As a war aim its targeting is pointless because it makes no difference to Russia militarily. The optics matter more.
As a post-war problem, whether Ukraine wins or Russia wins it’ll take years to de-mine these crop fields and restore the storage silos and processing plants.
Russia and other countries signed international agreements around not weaponising food production even in wartime. Europe is holding up its end by not sanctioning Russia’s food supply chain or transport. Russia is intentionally violating that agreement but additionally is setting itself up to keep violating that agreement (by accident) long after the war ends.
And its friends in the developing world aren’t blind to that.
Countries are making decisions on buying the stolen grain off Russian ships but that’s undesirable and temporary.
Long term the world can’t afford not to use that grain but it wants to do so normally and legally, not be dependent on a gangster state holding them hostage and ALLOWING them to buy Ukrainian grain in bulk only if they buy it through Russia and if Russia gets that grain at gun-to-head prices (assuming they’re even buying it rather than just stealing it).
Russia pulled that stunt in eastern Europe years ago by arbitrarily turning the gas supply down or even off to countries that didn’t do its bidding or offended it over something unrelated.
Want to know why even eastern Europe’s captive customer base was increasingly hostile to Russia? Start there. Nobody likes being blackmailed. The thought of Russia holding ALL the cards of grain, oil, gas AND rare metals in Eurasia scares the crap out of them.
And I’m willing to wager Russia has willing customers elsewhere in the world who are thinking, can we really afford to be in the same shoes if Russia wins in Ukraine.
Russia, in short, is setting itself up to offend its own customer base if it doesn’t alter course.