Russian attempts to cut off all Ukraine’s grain export routes are threatening to erase the small reprieve in sky-high grocery prices Americans experienced this year.
Russia’s pre-dawn drone attacks Monday on Ukraine’s key Danube river port region targeted Kyiv’s best remaining export route, after Moscow reinstated its blockade of the country’s Black Sea ports last week. It was a major escalation after Russia launched several rounds of missile attacks last week on Ukraine’s Odesa port, its main Black Sea port. Key commodity markets responded Monday by jumping sharply upward.
Up until last week, commodity markets had been stabilizing, easing, at least somewhat, concerns about food security for billions of people around the world. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have argued that Moscow is using its attacks on Ukraine’s grain exports as a way to crush the country’s agriculture-dependent economy while increasing its own role as a major food exporter to hungry populations across Africa and the Middle East.