Russia kills off Black Sea grain deal
On Monday night the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea was heavily damaged. A source from Ukraine’s security services told BBC it had carried out the attack using underwater drones, although there was no official claim of responsibility. Within hours of the explosion, Russia withdrew from a UN-brokered deal to export Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea. It’s unclear if this is the end of the deal – Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his “friend” Vladimir Putin wanted to maintain the agreement, while Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine was prepared to continue grain exports without Russia’s consent. But the risk of it ending is acute. “The world’s most vulnerable will face the harshest consequences of today’s withdrawal,” said David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee. About 80 per cent of East Africa’s grain is imported from Russia and Ukraine, with more than 50 million people facing hunger at crisis levels and food prices already up by nearly 40 per cent this year.
Photograph Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)