Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of worsening the global food crisis by using “hunger as a weapon” at a G7 meeting on Wednesday.
Vladimir Putin has once again been accused of deliberately sparking famine as part of his war in Ukraine, with one minister at Wednesday’s G7 meeting saying that the Russian president was using “hunger intentionally as a weapon”.
A major player in the global trade of wheat and other Agri goods, Ukraine has struggled to export its produce as Russians blockade the Black Sea, with some officials going so far as to accuse the invading nation of deliberately targeting stockpiles for destruction in the hopes of manufacturing a crisis.
According to a report by Der Spiegel, Germany’s Development Minister, Svenja Schulze, is yet another official who thinks that the nation is deliberately acting in such a way as to increase food insecurity globally.
“The terrible consequences of Russia’s war of aggression are being felt way beyond the borders of Ukraine,” a German press release reports the minister as saying.
“That is why we in Germany are directing our attention not only towards the East but also towards the South, where famines are threatening to break out because Mr Putin is using hunger intentionally as a weapon,” she continued.
“To counter this plan, we need to form a new alliance for global food security,” she then said, concluding that the war had brought the nations of the G7 closer together.
Global Food Crisis: India Export Ban Sees European Wheat Prices Hit Record High https://t.co/tMFTS1Jhhk
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This is not the first time Minister Schulze has warned of the dangers the ongoing invasion of Ukraine poses for the global supply of food, having previously said that the world is now facing the worst food crisis since the second world war, with millions facing starvation as a result of the war in the east.
“Due to Corona, extreme droughts and now the war, food prices worldwide have increased by a third and are now at record levels,” she said. “The World Food Program currently assumes that far more than 300 million people are suffering from acute hunger and has to constantly revise its forecasts upwards.”
“The bitter message is that we are facing the worst famine since World War II, with millions of dead,” she went on to say.
In response to the issue of world hunger, however, the G7 are now planning on launching the “Alliance for Global Food Security”, a scheme which Schulze helped push for.
As part of the new initiative, the G7 nations will help secure financing for the supply of food, but also to help coordinate food security measures globally.
How effective such measures can be in the medium term remains to be seen though, with droughts in India posing a further threat to the supply of wheat many in the developing world so desperately depend on.
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