Russia Declares War on Wheat, Peas, and Barley

Russia escalated its war on Ukraine’s grain exports again this week, sending wheat prices soaring and threatening to exacerbate global hunger as it seeks to blockade one of the world’s foremost breadbaskets.

After withdrawing from a U.N.-brokered grain deal on Monday, which allowed ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports to reach world markets, the Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday announced that any vessels en route to Ukrainian ports would be regarded as potentially carrying military cargo—and could be subject to attack in what would amount to a significant escalation of the conflict and a challenge to long-standing U.S. efforts to ensure freedom of navigation around the globe.

The threat came as Ukraine’s port city of Odesa has been subjected to a nightly barrage, for four days straight now, of Russian missile strikes that may have impacted up to 60,000 tons of grain, warehouses, and dock facilities, prompting top U.S. officials to sound the alarm on potential food shortages. On Friday, Ukrainian officials said Moscow’s latest strike had destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley. The White House also warned that U.S. intelligence indicated that Russia had laid sea mines on the approach to Ukrainian ports, intending to blame Kyiv as part of a false-flag operation.

“This is yet another twist and turn by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Russia to broaden the war, so to speak, and to include the maritime domain,” said Sebastian Bruns, an expert in maritime strategy and security at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University. “He’s looking for other ways to intimidate the West.”

Russia’s threats pose a major test for the international community’s ability to safeguard shipping in the area and freedom of navigation, a cornerstone of maritime law that allows vessels to sail unimpeded through international waters. While Russia has waged war against Ukraine for over a year, an attack on a single commercial vessel could embroil several countries in one fell swoop, given the globalized nature of shipping.

“If somebody attacks those civilian vessels, it’s a throwback to World War I and the sinking of the Lusitania,” said retired Adm. James Foggo, who served as the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa, referring to the British passenger ship sunk by a German U-boat in 1915. “It’s a slippery slope to a much more serious conflict.”

The U.S. Navy routinely conducts freedom of navigation operations around the world to preserve the right to access international waters. On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin dispatched U.S. fighter jets and the guided-missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner to the Middle East in response to the Iran’s recent attempts to seize merchant shipping vessels in the region. But in the Black Sea, where Russia and Western powers have vied for influence for centuries, Washington and its NATO allies are constrained by geography, geopolitics, and paperwork.

The Black Sea, which is slightly larger than the U.S. state of California, is ringed by six countries. Half of them—Romania, Turkey, and Bulgaria—are NATO members. The narrow entrance to the sea, the Bosporus, is controlled by Turkey under a 1936 agreement known as the Montreux Convention. In the early days of Russia’s invasion, Ankara invoked the convention to close off the strategic choke point to warships, undercutting Russia’s ability to reinforce its Black Sea Fleet. Washington withdrew its warships from the region shortly before the invasion as it has sought to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia.

“If this was the South China Sea, we would be conducting freedom of navigation operations,” said Kurt Volker, who served as a U.S. ambassador to NATO during the George W. Bush administration. “Because of the unwillingness to confront Russia, we are backing off from this principle, which we have otherwise stood by.”

On Monday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said there were no plans under consideration to escort commercial shipping in the area in the wake of Russia’s withdrawal from the grain deal. In the late 1980s, the Navy did escort reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers out of harm’s way in the Persian Gulf during the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq War, a period known as the “Tanker War.”

“The U.S and its allies mustered significant resources to support the free flow of international cargo [during the Tanker War],” Bruns said. “It helped the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. at large, to play a significant role as guardian of the maritime system.”

With three NATO member states on the shores of the Black Sea, a similar operation could be replicated by the alliance, said retired Adm. James Stavridis, who took part in the Navy convoy mission, known as Operation Earnest Will.

“NATO and the U.S. could escort the grain shipments at sea, something they have plenty of capability to do with three major NATO nations in the Black Sea,” he said in an email. “With well stated warnings to the Russian Black Sea fleet, NATO should return fire if a Russian warship were to attack a grain ship, which is essentially a humanitarian vessel operating in international waters.”

After launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has harnessed the body of water to block Ukraine’s food exports, thereby strangling its agricultural industry and exerting yet another pressure point on Kyiv outside of the battlefield.

Ukraine, for its part, has vowed to continue its grain shipments in lieu of the Black Sea grain deal and warned on Thursday that any vessels traveling to ports in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine could also be seen as military targets, directly echoing Moscow’s language in its response. Prior to the collapse of the fragile agreement, the Turkish navy had reportedly also pledged to help ensure the safety of Ukraine’s exports, although its continued involvement remains unclear.

“The Russian Federation has once again brutally violated the universal right to free navigation for the whole world and is deliberately undermining food security,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “The Kremlin has turned the Black Sea into a danger zone.”

If Russia began attacking vessels carrying Ukrainian grain, it could mark a sharp escalation in the conflict. Under the law of naval warfare, Moscow has the right to visit and search merchant ships—but not to immediately target them, said James Kraska, a professor of international maritime law at the U.S. Naval War College.

“There’s basic humanitarian principles that apply, and you can’t engage or treat them as a target,” he said. “They’re still civilian objects.”

But even if Moscow does not immediately act on its threats, just the fear of an attack, or the presence of the embargo, is stirring enough uncertainty to spook insurers and international grain markets. Wheat prices have registered double-digit increases in price since Russia left the deal, and maritime insurers are jittery. Prices would have gone higher were it not for bumper crops in big wheat-producing countries, which has cushioned the blow of the blockade. But that’s all part of Russia’s plan to advance outside of the battlefield, where it cannot.

“It just drives up the cost and the risk of sea freight trade with Ukraine through Black Sea ports,” said Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell University. “That’s presumably Russia’s objective: It’s trying to isolate Ukraine and impose pain on Ukraine—and that means also imposing some pain on Ukraine’s trade partners.”

“This is just another way of hurting its enemy in a war,” Barrett added. “The greatest costs of Russia’s action are going to be shouldered by Ukraine, the government and its farmers and its grain traders, because the world has already adapted to the unpredictability of Black Sea exports.”