How Biden can punish Russia for abandoning its Black Sea grain agreement

The death of the Black Sea grain agreement should prompt a fundamental reassessment of American policy.  

This decision demonstrates President Vladimir Putin’s conviction that a long war remains Russia’s best, and perhaps only, strategic option. Therefore, there is no purpose to negotiations until he is disabused of this notion.  

Turkey, meanwhile, has demonstrated its growing openness to rejoining the Western camp in earnest. The upshot is as plain as it is politically fraught: Ukraine requires the long-range strike capabilities to hit the Russian fleet and turn the Black Sea into a NATO-aligned lake. 

The Black Sea grain agreement was meant to demonstrate either Turkish duplicity or Russian reasonableness, depending upon who was asked to assess the issue. Starting in July 2022, the agreement created a maritime corridor for grain exports from Ukraine’s southwestern ports. Since Ukraine was a world-leading grain and fertilizer producer, Russia’s removal of Ukrainian products from the market through its blockade triggered an upward spiral in global food prices that put immense pressure on Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.  

Russia’s goal through this commodity warfare was to split the West from the so-called Global South, ideally generating broad international pressure on the U.S. and its allies to negotiate. This never occurred. Although Russia remains relatively popular in Africa, the West never relented in supporting Ukraine. 

The agreement had undeniable benefits for the West. It stabilized food prices in Europe and reduced inflationary pressures on Africa and the Middle East. Lest we forget, Sri Lanka nearly collapsed last April due to a massive cost of living crisis, partly induced by Russian grain restrictions. 

Yet the agreement, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations over several months of negotiations, also created a lever that Russia could pull if it sought to pressure or divide the West. Russia naturally did not intend to abide by it indefinitely without demanding a variety of concessions.

During previous rounds of brinksmanship, Russia either left the agreement only briefly or never actually went so far as to suspend it. 

The difficulty for Russia is that its lever was and remains indirect. In the last year, the West has expanded the amount of grain it can ship overland into Europe, despite resistance from Polish and Romanian farmers earlier this year. It has also improved links between Ukraine, Romanian Black Sea ports and other ports along the Danube, multiplying the grain exported beyond Odesa and other neighboring ports.  Pressure on Africa, meanwhile, has lightened, as more Ukrainian grain has reached African markets during the agreement. Hence Russia’s pressure became increasingly unlikely to prompt a major European policy change. 

Russia’s objective in embracing the agreement was a relaxation of international financial sanctions against its State Agricultural Bank, which is a typically neo-Soviet pseudo-private hybrid. Dmitry Patrushev, Russian agriculture minister and the son of former FSB Director and Putin confidante Nikolai Patrushev, runs the bank’s board. As with all major financial institutions in Russia, RusAg plays an essential cash-washing and graft role. Even a small gap in the Western financial sanctions system would have been a lifeline for Russia, allowing much-needed direct cash injections that would have been bent to oligarchic ends. 

The EU was reportedly mulling a carve-out for RusAg that might have reconnected it to international markets. But Russia’s exit from the deal implies at minimum that such a policy is improbable. 

The Kremlin was once looking for pressure points — wedges with which to probe and push the West apart. It has not failed completely. As the Vilnius summit demonstrated, the Ukraine-NATO issue remains fraught with political division.  

But Russia has now given up a piece of leverage that is fitting for a power that feels confident: Or, more probable, Russia sees that the only path forward is to slog it out on the battlefield in a long, brutal war.

Turkey, meanwhile, is nearing the completion of a long-term policy shift that began just days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Erdogan has just survived a hard-fought election — elections still matter in Turkey — and has slowly but surely shifted his orientation toward Europe once again. 

This is unsurprising. Turkey is a reactive power, not one with a committed long-term plan.  At this point, Ankara is testing the potential for a rapprochement with the West, which would give it more strategic freedom of action in the Middle East and, equally relevant, another shot at European economic integration. Hence its slow but clear Western drift.

Turkey first served as an interlocutor with Ukraine for prisoner swaps and initial negotiations. It followed up with open arms transfers to Ukraine, followed by demands for Ukrainian NATO membership and acceptance of Sweden’s NATO accession. 

The Biden administration should apply pressure now while it has the chance. Russia has escalated the conflict, but at the cost of cutting off one of its own lines for manipulating this situation. It must be punished, not emboldened in this course of action.  

Three moves are advisable. First, the U.S. should lay the groundwork for an escort operation that ensures the safety of Ukrainian grain transiting through Romanian ports. There is precedent for this: Operation EARNEST WILL, the U.S. Navy’s escort mission for Kuwaiti-carried oil during the Iran-Iraq War, stabilized the international energy supply during a vicious conflict. An international coalition of maritime powers, ideally including the U.S., Turkey and the UK, should be prepared to deploy warships to the Black Sea, with air cover, to deter Russian mischief against Romanian-exported grain. 

Second, the U.S. should prioritize anti-ship weapons in its transfers to Ukraine over the coming months. The Ukrainians could solve the Black Sea issue themselves if they only had the tools to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet in port or out at sea. They have already proven adept in using cheap, unsophisticated unmanned surface vessels against the Russians. But combining these low-tech weapons with a handful of high-tech missiles (ideally several dozen Naval Strike Missile and Harpoons) and linking them with American satellite and UAS reconnaissance and targeting information would prove lethal.  

The destruction of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet would have the added benefit of denying Russia naval strategic depth.  The Ukrainian offensive is designed to squeeze and compress the Russian line until it snaps. Absent a naval force in the Black Sea, Ukraine’s odds of success improve markedly. 

Third, the U.S. should consider whether, and in what manner, the Turks might have an interest in solving the Russian problem in Syria. Russia’s presence in Syria has restrained Turkish and Israeli action for years and has given Russia leverage against the U.S. Through proxies, Turkey could increase the pressure on Russian deployments in Syria, particularly on Russian air defenses that are so problematic for Israel.  Removing this one impediment would open possibilities for American regional engagement and cement Turkey’s pivot back to the West. 

Russia’s formal abandonment of the Black Sea grain agreement is a tool to be turned against Putin while he is vulnerable. Biden should seize it while he can. 

Seth Cropsey is founder and president of Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy Undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of “Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy“ and “Seablindness: How Political Neglect is Choking American Seapower and What to Do about it.”