At UN Security Council on Food Security, Blinken Raves That ‘Russia Is Starving the World’

May 20, 2022 (EIRNS)—Speaking May 18 as the chair of the UN Security Council’s Ministerial on Food Security, Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered a wild diatribe against Russia, holding it responsible for the entire world’s food insecurity crisis and charging it with using starvation of civilians as a tool of war, a violation of UNSC Resolution 2417. This, he intoned, may in fact be a war crime. He then ran through a litany of Russia’s alleged crimes, including everything from blocking ports, “trapping Ukrainian agricultural exports, jeopardizing global food supplies,” and cutting off commercial naval traffic in and around the port of Odessa. Russia’s worst crime, as he described it, appears to be “violating the rules-based international order.”

Blinken charged that Russian forces have destroyed civilian infrastructure critical to the production and transport of food—water, power, rail lines, and grain storage facilities—“stealing stocks of food” in the regions it occupies, etc. Moreover, he insisted that 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain sits “unused in Ukrainian silos as global food supplies dwindle” and prices skyrocket, causing food insecurity to worsen around the world. Reports from Russia that Ukraine is actually emptying its silos and shipping grain out to Europe as payment for weapons would seem to belie that claim. It is instructive too that even a publication as unsavory as the City of London’s The Economist had to admit in this week’s edition that it’s the Ukrainians who’ve mined their ports’ waters, trapping dozens of ships there.

Because illegal and coercive U.S. and Western sanctions on Russia have boomeranged to contribute directly to the global food insecurity crisis, Blinken felt compelled to preemptively absolve the West and its sanctions rampage from any responsibility in this matter. Sanctions don’t prevent Russia from exporting food and fertilizer, he screeched, insisting that there are sanctions’ exemptions “for food, for fertilizer and seeds from Russia, and we’re working with countries every day to ensure that they understand that sanctions do not prevent the flow of these items.” The U.S. has clean hands, he pontificated. It’s Moscow’s decision “to weaponize food,” and thus, it’s incumbent on UNSC members, he said, to demand that Russia stop these actions that make the Ukrainian and global food crisis worse.