2023年5月23日
克里姆林宫对乌克兰的无端和无理的战争严重损害了乌克兰经济，加剧了全球特别是发展中国家的粮食不安全状况。长期以来，乌克兰一直是“欧洲的粮仓”，为全球各地千百万人提供粮食。2021年，乌克兰是数十个非洲和中东国家的主要谷物供应国，但在俄罗斯2022年全面入侵后，俄罗斯封锁了乌克兰通过黑海的贸易路线，在乌克兰农田中布雷，焚烧农作物，摧毁乌克兰的粮食储存供应，造成劳动力短缺，并攻击商船和港口。据乌克兰有关部门、媒体报道以及克里姆林宫自己在乌克兰被占领地区的代理人所说，俄罗斯还偷窃乌克兰的粮食谋利。联合国粮食及农业组织（简称FAO）表示，克里姆林宫对乌克兰的战争已经“扰乱了黑海地区的农业生产和贸易，引发2022年上半年国际粮食价格前所未有的峰值”。
2022年7月，联合国和土耳其促成的黑海谷物倡议通过允许从乌克兰多个港口“出口粮食及相关食品以及化肥的安全航行”，以缓解克里姆林宫加剧的全球粮食危机。BSGI在降低全球粮食价格通胀和向世界各地人们提供急需的谷物方面发挥了至关重要的作用。俄罗斯2022年10月捏造借口暂停参与BSGI，而且威胁7月将再度停止。如果俄罗斯再次暂停或停止参与BSGI，全球最贫困的人将受到最严重的影响。我们敦促俄罗斯继续参与BSGI，结束其在乌克兰的非法战争，恢复正常的农业生产和贸易，立即大幅度改善全球粮食安全状况。
克里姆林宫将全球粮食安全武器化，企图从其加剧的粮食危机中获利。莫斯科一贯试图推卸责任，制造谎言，指责是国际社会对俄罗斯因其对乌克兰的战争而实施的制裁加剧了全球粮食不安全，并阻碍了俄罗斯的粮食和化肥出口。事实上，对俄罗斯实施制裁的美国及其伙伴国和盟国已经采取措施，将农业贸易排除在制裁之外。实际上，美国的制裁对涉及农产品和化肥的交易给予特别授权。欧盟和英国也采取了措施保护粮食和农产品。与此同时，俄罗斯实际上对自己的出口进行限制，谋图以牺牲世界各地的弱势人口为代价来实现利润最大化。莫斯科还对特定的化肥实施了出口配额，最近又将这些配额延长至2023年5月。俄罗斯从出口农产品中获得创纪录的利润，这主要是由于俄罗斯发动战争导致全球大宗商品价格上涨所致。去年，俄罗斯的化肥收益“飙升”，其小麦出口在12月份“接近历史最高水平”。俄罗斯必须停止从其战争中牟取暴利，停止将粮食作为对乌克兰的战争武器，伤害世界各地遭受饥饿的人们。

图一显示从2020年9月至2022年7月，全球从俄罗斯联邦进口的化肥稳步增加。
图片来源：GLOBAL FERTILIZER MARKETS AND POLICIES: A JOINT FAO/WTO MAPPING EXERCISE（全球化肥市场和政策：粮农组织/世界贸易组织联合勘查行动）
俄罗斯在赚取创纪录的利润的同时，看起来也在通过不负责任的行为和残暴行径破坏BSGI，这些做法或将在夏季收获开始之前导致向世界提供拯救生命的乌克兰谷物供应被切断。克里姆林宫利用虚假信息来抹黑和削弱BSGI。普京总统散布关于BSGI货运分布地理情况的谎言，诬陷西方国家“欺骗”发展中国家，指称西方国家将“几乎所有从乌克兰出口的粮食”运往欧盟。2022年9月，普京称乌克兰的87艘船中仅有两艘船驶往发展中国家。《卫报》援引联合国数据报道：“普京的说法至少存在10倍的错误。”根据《经济学人》的数据，“将近一半的[乌克兰谷物]出口被运送到非洲和亚洲的中低收入国家”。发展中国家获得乌克兰小麦的大约65％，而“最贫困、最不发达的国家”获得了大约 19%。乌克兰农作物中有很大一部分运往土耳其，截至2022年9月，这部分占乌克兰总出口的18％，这些小麦被再加工成面粉，出口到非洲和中东国家。

在图二中，图表1显示发展中国家得到的粮食出口份额最大；图2显示玉米和小麦占粮食出口的大部分份额；图3显示玉米几乎等量运达发达国家和发展中国家；图4显示发展中国家从小麦出口的绝大部分份额中受益。
图片来源：United National Conference on Trade and Development（联合国贸易和发展会议）
BSGI还使世界粮食计划署（World Food Programme ）能够向非洲之角、也门和阿富汗提供人道主义粮食援助。与俄罗斯的虚假信息相反，BSGI通过直接向低收入国家提供急需的谷物以及降低全球粮食价格来帮助面临困难的人们。阻碍实施BSGI，增加全球粮食成本，使寻求谷物进口的国家的人民付出代价，而俄罗斯则赚取最大利润。克里姆林宫的谎言无法掩盖真相，也无法掩盖数据支持的证据，这些数据表明俄罗斯正在通过限制供应来损害全球粮食安全，从而使价格居高不下，以便莫斯科可以从其发动的战争中获得创纪录的利润。
克里姆林宫高级官员以及政府出资雇佣的宣传人员公开呼吁俄罗斯政府将饥荒作为武器。2022年4月，俄罗斯前总统、该国安全委员会副主席德米特里·梅德韦杰夫（Dmitri Medvedev）威胁要利用俄罗斯的粮食供应——他称之为“我们隐秘但强大的武器”——来影响全球粮食安全。
俄罗斯国家主导的宣传机构RT和Rossiya Segodnya的总编玛格丽塔·西蒙尼扬（Margarita Simonyan）于2022年6月17日在对普京总统的采访中，引用了她所谓的“希望出现（世界）饥荒” 的“讽刺性笑话”。西蒙尼扬解释说，“不同的人”希望发生饥荒，因为“这将使它们[西方国家]理智起来”，解除制裁并与俄罗斯友好相处。西蒙尼扬暗示，这将会发生，因为俄罗斯引发饥荒的能力将迫使西方意识到与俄罗斯“不可能”不友好相处。梅德韦杰夫和西蒙尼扬公开表明克里姆林宫意图将全球粮食不安全问题武器化，以对乌克兰及其支持者进行讹诈，这符合克里姆林宫长期以来的非人性化言论和威胁的模式。
美国长期以来一直致力于减少世界各地的饥馑，并致力于减轻俄罗斯发动的战争对全球粮食安全造成的有害影响。2022年，美国为粮食安全工作提供了135亿美元的援助，包括人道主义援助和发展援助。美国历来是世界粮食计划署最大的捐助国。仅在2022年，美国就拨款超过72亿美元——占世界粮食计划署全部资金的一半——帮助为全球1.4亿人提供粮食援助。
美国还在扩大与世界各国的长期合作，使全球粮食系统更能适应不断变化的气候和政治环境，并改善供应链，将粮食和农产品送到最需要的地方。美国政府的全球粮食安全倡议“保障未来粮食供给”（Feed the Future）项目中的“适应性作物和土壤愿景”（Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils，简称VACS）将通过确定非洲最有营养的作物，并研究它们如何应对极端气候事件，为非洲决策者提供能够推动作物适应性研究和投资的信息，帮助非洲实现一个更有粮食保障的未来。保障未来粮食供给通过向非洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲和加勒比地区的20个国家提供相关知识和工具，从根本上解决饥饿和贫困问题，帮助人们实现自给自足。
俄罗斯对乌克兰的战争加剧了全球粮食危机。俄罗斯政府试图通过制造谎言指责他人导致了全球粮食系统日益恶化的危机来转嫁因其行为而应负的责任。
普京对乌克兰的无端战争给乌克兰、邻国以及全球人民造成了灾难性的影响。克里姆林宫带来了死亡和破坏，导致成千上万的平民死伤，使数百万人在国内流离失所，数百万人成为难民，并大规模破坏了民用基础设施和生产粮食的农田。
克里姆林宫将饥饿武器化并散布虚假信息，试图在粮食危机的起因方面欺骗国际社会并破坏BSGI，而BSGI在减轻普京对乌克兰的战争的破坏性后果方面发挥了关键作用。克里姆林宫撒谎是为了掩盖其使用勒索讹诈手段，以牺牲地球上最弱势人口为代价，从其发动的战争中赚取更多的金钱。
BSGI对于向世界各地有需要的人们提供粮食以及降低全球粮食价格至关重要，必须加以延展和扩大。对BSGI的任何干扰破坏都可能导致全球粮食价格再度飙升，降低保险公司和商业船运商的信心，给全球农户和消费者带来更大的不确定性。对粮食贸易的干扰将给已深受严重人道主义灾难困扰的低收入国家带来新的困难。俄罗斯发动了这场针对乌克兰的战争，而且俄罗斯正在把粮食作为武器使用。俄罗斯能够而且必须停止对乌克兰人民和世界各地的弱势人口造成严重伤害的丧尽天良、冷酷无情的行为。

GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT CENTER
MAY 23, 2023
This bulletin is also available in: Arabic, Chinese, French, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Urdu.
The Kremlin’s unprovoked and unjustifiable war against Ukraine has severely damaged Ukraine’s economy and exacerbated global food insecurity, especially in developing countries. Ukraine has long been the “breadbasket of Europe,” feeding millions across the globe. It was a top grain supplier to dozens of African and Middle Eastern countries in 2021, but after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, Russia blockaded Ukrainian trade routes through the Black Sea, mined Ukrainian agricultural fields, burned crops, destroyed Ukraine’s food storage supplies, created labor shortages, and attacked merchant shipping vessels and ports. Russia is also stealing Ukraine’s grain for its own profit, according to Ukrainian authorities, media reports, and the Kremlin’s own proxies in the occupied areas of Ukraine. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine has “disrupted agricultural production and trade in the Black Sea region, triggering an unprecedented peak in international food prices in the first half of 2022.”  
In July 2022, the United Nations and Türkiye brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) to alleviate the Kremlin-exacerbated global food crisis by allowing “safe navigation for the export of grain and related foodstuffs and fertilizers” from several Ukrainian ports. The BSGI has been critical to lowering inflation in global food prices and getting urgently needed grains to people around the world. Russia used false pretexts to temporarily suspend its participation in the BSGI in October 2022, and is threatening to do so again in July.  Should Russia again suspend or stop participating in the BSGI, the world’s neediest would suffer most.  We urge Russia to continue to participate in the BSGI and end its illegal war in Ukraine to allow a return to normal agricultural production and trade and an immediate and significant improvement in global food security. 
The Kremlin is weaponizing global food security as it seeks to profit from the food crisis that it exacerbated. Moscow regularly tries to shift the blame, falsely charging that sanctions imposed by the international community on Russia in response to its war against Ukraine increase global food insecurity and impede Russia’s exports of food and fertilizer. The fact is that U.S. and its partners and allies imposing sanctions on Russia have taken steps to carve out agricultural trade from our sanctions. In fact, U.S. sanctions specifically authorize transactions involving agricultural products and fertilizer. The European Union and the United Kingdom have also taken efforts to shield food and agricultural products. Meanwhile, Russia is actually restricting its own exports, seeking to maximize profits at the expense of vulnerable populations around the world. Moscow has also imposed export quotas on select fertilizers, and recently extended these quotas through May 2023. Russia is reaping record profits from exporting agricultural products, largely a result of the elevated global commodity prices caused by the war Russia started. Russia’s fertilizer revenue “soared” last year and its wheat exports were “close to record highs” in December. Russia must stop profiteering from its war and using food as a weapon of war against Ukraine, harming hungry people around the world. 

Image Source: GLOBAL FERTILIZER MARKETS AND POLICIES: A JOINT FAO/WTO MAPPING EXERCISE 
While taking in record profits, Russia also appears to be sabotaging the BSGI with irresponsible behavior and brutality which could cut off a life-saving supply of Ukrainian grain to the world just before the summer harvest begins. The Kremlin wields disinformation to discredit and undermine the BSGI. President Putin has spread lies about the geography of shipment distributions under the BSGI to falsely accuse the West of “cheating” the developing world allegedly by sending “almost all the grain exported from Ukraine” to the European Union. In September 2022, Putin said that only two out of 87 ships from Ukraine had sailed to developing countries. Citing UN data, the Guardian reported that “Putin’s claim was false by a factor of at least 10.” According to the Economist, “almost half of [Ukrainian grain] exports have gone to middle- or low-income countries in Africa and Asia.” Developing countries receive approximately 65 percent of Ukrainian wheat, while the “poorest, least developed countries,” get approximately 19 percent. Much of the Ukrainian crop shipped to Türkiye — 18 percent of total exports as of September 2022 — is reprocessed and exported as flour to countries in Africa and the Middle East.  


Image Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 
The BSGI also enables the World Food Programme to deliver humanitarian food assistance to the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Afghanistan. Contrary to Russia’s disinformation, the BSGI is helping people in need by directly delivering desperately needed grains to lower-income countries, and by bringing down food prices globally. By impeding the BSGI, increasing the cost of food globally, it is people in countries seeking to import the grain who will pay the price, while Russia extracts maximum profit. The Kremlin’s lies cannot hide the truth or cover up evidence supported by data showing that Russia is harming global food security by restricting supply, and thereby keeping prices high so Moscow can make record profits from the war it started. 
High-ranking Kremlin officials and state-paid propagandists are openly calling on the government to weaponize hunger. In April 2022, Russia’s former president and the deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, threatened to use Russia’s food supplies, which he called “our quiet” but “formidable weapon,” to influence global food security.  
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia’s state-directed propaganda outlets RT and Rossiya Segodnya, in an interview with President Putin on June 17, 2022, cited what she called a “cynical joke” about the “hope for [world] famine.” Simonyan explained that “different people” hope for famine because it will “bring them [the West] to reason,” leading to the removal of sanctions and a friendship with Russia. This will happen, Simonyan implied, because Russia’s ability to cause famine will force the West to realize that it is “impossible” not to be friends with Russia. Medvedev’s and Simonyan’s public statements about the Kremlin’s intentions to weaponize global food insecurity to blackmail Ukraine and its supporters fits the long-standing pattern of the Kremlin’s dehumanizing rhetoric and threats. 
The United States has long worked to reduce hunger around the world and is committed to mitigating the harmful impact of Russia’s war on global food security. The United States provided $13.5 billion in 2022 to food security efforts, including humanitarian and development assistance. The United States is historically the largest donor to the World Food Programme (WFP). In 2022 alone, the United States allocated over $7.2 billion—half of all funding— to the WFP helping to provide food to 140 million people worldwide. 
The United States is also expanding its longstanding work with countries around the world to make global food systems more resilient to shifting climates and political environments and to improve supply chains to get food and agricultural products where they are needed most. The  Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS), which is part of the U.S. government’s global food security initiative Feed the Future, will help Africa achieve a more food-secure future by identifying the most nutritious crops in Africa and examining how they respond to extreme climate events to provide African policymakers with information that can drive crop adaptation research and investment. Feed the Future, addresses the root causes of hunger and poverty by providing people in 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean the knowledge and tools they need to feed themselves. 
Russia’s war against Ukraine has exacerbated the global food crisis. The Russian government is attempting to deflect responsibility for its actions by falsely blaming others for the worsening crisis in the global food system.  
Putin’s unprovoked war against Ukraine has unleashed catastrophic effects on Ukraine, its neighbors, and people across the globe. The Kremlin has wreaked death and destruction, killing and injuring thousands of civilians, internally displacing millions, making refugees of millions more, and massively damaging civilian infrastructure and food-producing agricultural lands.  
The Kremlin weaponizes hunger and disseminates disinformation, attempting to deceive the international community about the causes of the food crisis and to undermine the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which has been critical in alleviating the devastating consequences of Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine. The Kremlin lies to hide its use of blackmail to make even more money off the war it started, at the expense of the planet’s most vulnerable populations.  
The BSGI has been critical for delivering food to people in need around the word and for lowering global food prices and must be extended and expanded. Any disruption to the BSGI risks another spike in global food prices, as well as lowering the confidence of insurers and commercial shippers, and creating greater uncertainty for global farmers and consumers. Disruption to the grain deal will impose new hardships on lower-income countries already reeling from dire humanitarian disasters. Russia started this war against Ukraine and Russia is using food as a weapon.  Russia can and must stop its unconscionable, callous actions causing grievous harm to the people of Ukraine and to vulnerable populations around the world.