LONDON — Russian hostilities in Ukraine are preventing grain from leaving the “breadbasket of the world” and making food more expensive across the globethreatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.
Together, Russia and Ukraine export nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley and more than 70% of its sunflower oil and are big suppliers of corn. Russia is the top global fertilizer producer.
World food prices were already climbing, and the war made things worse, preventing some 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain from getting to the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia.
Weeks of negotiations on safe corridors to get grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have made little progress, with urgency rising as the summer harvest season arrives.
“This needs to happen in the next couple of months (or) it’s going to be horrific,” said Anna Nagurney, who studies crisis management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is on the board of the Kyiv School of Economics.
June 17 recap:Ukraine moves closer to EU candidacy; Families of 2 missing American veterans speak out: Latest updates
Latest developments:
►A third American who traveled to Ukraine to lend assistance in the war against Russia appears to be missing amid growing indications the other two have been captured, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
► Ukraine will not host Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, organizers announced Friday. In May, the Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra won the contest with “Stefania” and the right to host next year’s event.
►The UK said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Ukraine Friday on a surprise visit, his second trip since the Russian invasion began.
900 Ukrainian children killed, injured since start of war
More than 900 children have been killed or injured since Russia began its war against Ukraine in March, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said on Telegram Saturday.
Some 323 children were killed and 583 injured, with most casualties occurring in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions.
The prosecutor general’s office cautioned that those numbers aren’t final and are likely lower than the actual figure, as death and injury counts where there is active fighting cannot be taken.
Shelling by Russian forces has damaged some 2,028 educational institutions, of which more than 200 were “completely destroyed.”
— She reads
Missing Americans:Two US military vets who felt compelled to fight Russia, are now missing in Ukraine
Russia frees captive medic who filmed Mariupol’s horror
TALLINN, Estonia — A celebrated Ukrainian medic whose footage was smuggled out of the besieged city of Mariupol by an Associated Press team was freed by Russian forces on Friday, three months after she was taken captive on the streets of the city.
Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her team’s efforts over two weeks to save the wounded, including both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
She transferred the clips to an Associated Press team, the last international journalists in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom fled with it embedded in a tampon on March 15. Taira and a colleague were taken prisoner by Russian forces on March 16, the same day a Russian airstrike hit a theater in the city center, killing around 600 people, according to an Associated Press investigation.
“It was such a great sense of relief. Those sound like such ordinary words, and I do n’t even know what to say, ”her husband de ella, Vadim Puzanov, told The Associated Press late Friday
–Associated Press
Contributing: Associated Press
www.usatoday.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism