The price of wheat continues to rise in the United States and elsewhere after Russia pulled out of a United Nations-negotiated deal to export grain from Ukraine Monday.
Wheat commodity futures have risen about 12 percent since Russia announced it would suspend the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed Ukraine to export wheat from its southern ports via the Bosporus. Ukraine was one of the world’s largest wheat exporters before the Russian invasion.
Russia has also continued to attack Ukrainian port infrastructure and cities with missiles and drones, damaging the ability to export wheat if the deal were to resume. Those strikes have destroyed 60,000 tons of grain, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
“This attack proves that their target is not only Ukraine and not only the lives of our people. About a million tons of food is stored in the ports attacked today,” Zelensky argued. “This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa and Asia long ago.”
The country, however, has claimed the attacks are “retribution” for a strike on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea Monday — which Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken predicted the rising prices while criticizing the Russian move Monday.
“So the result of Russia’s action today — weaponizing food, using it as a tool, as a weapon in its war against Ukraine — will be to make food harder to come by in places that desperately need it, and have prices rise,” Blinken said. “We’re already seeing the market react to this as prices are going up.”