Ukraine: War Affecting Global Food Supplies

The UN is now calling it another war within Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the country once described as the ‘world’s food basket,’ fighting is now stopping food supplies to feed Ukraine – and the world.

“A country which represented more than 10% of the world’s cereal exports is now exporting a trickle,” the World Food Programme’s new emergency coordinator in Ukraine, Matthew Hollingworth warns.

“We’re seeing a potential impact on 400 million people around the world who would eat bread with wheat grown in this country,” he says.

Food prices have ‘shot up’ around the world, including in places like Afghanistan and Yemen, where millions were on the brink of starvation even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Russian attacks along the Black Sea coast, including Ukraine’s main port in Odesa, are strangling trade flows in and out of the country.

Speaking to the BBC in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Hollingworth warns “you always believe it can’t get any worse. Unfortunately, we know it can always get worse.”

BBC /Shakirat Sadiq