UK Warns of Escalation in Russian War on Grain Supply

Britain warned Ukraine Tuesday that Russia may escalate its attacks on Ukrainian grain facilities in coming days, expanding its assault to include sea mines and attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea. 

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warning him about the possible escalation—and telling him that British authorities had detected Russian moves to lay additional sea mines in approaches to Ukrainian ports. 

“Our information indicates that the Russian military may expand their targeting of Ukrainian grain facilities further,” Britain’s envoy to the United Nations, Barbara Woodward, said in New York Tuesday. 

Given the new information, Woodward said the U.N. Security Council would meet Wednesday to discuss Russia’s assault on Ukrainian grain facilities and supply routes, and what she called Moscow’s “attempts to weaponize global food supplies.” The meeting is taking place at Ukraine’s request.

“President Putin has the power to end this war tomorrow,” Woodward said. “But he has shown no sign that he is willing to do so. In fact, he seems dead set on causing as much suffering around the world as he can.” 

The warnings of an escalation follow days of bombings of key grain installations: in the past week Russia has hit Ukraine’s main port of Odesa, targeting grain storage facilities, as well Ukrainian grain warehouses on the Danube River. 

The attacks have come after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin withdrew from a U.N.-brokered deal to allow Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea. The accord was one of the few diplomatic victories secured after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and helped bring down global food prices, offering relief to communities in some of the poorest parts of the world. Russia’s invasion last year had sent food prices soaring, as traders factored in the impact on Ukraine, a leading global supplier of key staples such as wheat and sunflower oil. 

Monday’s bombings of the grain warehouses on the Danube occurred in the Ukrainian port city of Reni, which sits across the river from Romania, a member of the European Union and the NATO military alliance. The attack prompted Romanian President Klaus Iohannis to warn that Russia’s latest attacks had come “very close” to his country.

“This recent escalation pose[s] serious risks to the security in the Black Sea,” he said on Twitter. “It also affects further [Ukrainian] grain transit and thus the global food security.”