Saturday’s missile attack on the Ukrainian port of Odessa opens up many questions about the application of the istanbul agreement which guarantees the exit of the 22 million tons of grain that the war prevents them from being exported to destinations especially in need of such products. If the way in which the compromise with the mediation of the president of TurkeyRecep Tayyip Erdogan, justified the a priori fears that the document was a dead letter, Russia’s decision to bomb before the first ship left port heralds an at least haphazard application of the agreement, if not to say that it is barely viable.
It is enough to review the conditions under which both parties negotiated the opening of a safe route in the Black Sea between two Ukrainian ports and the Bosphorus to gauge the weakness of the compromise reached: Negotiators never shared a table, Turkish officials acted as messengers, and Russia and Ukraine separately signed the final document. The degree of mistrust was and is so high that reasons of an economic and humanitarian nature, more on the Russian side than on the Ukrainian side, barely weigh against the strategic objectives, Vladimir Putin’s determination to set the tempo of the crisis and the manifest incapacity of the guarantors of the agreementincluding the United Nations, to safeguard what was agreed upon.
Those harmed by a permanent uncertainty are harmed at a time Ukrainian farmers that store grain in silos without the possibility of giving it an outlet and the recipients of cereals such as wheat, oats and corn, staple foods in the depressed South and in many developing countries. Neither the peasants, citizens of a country devastated by more than 150 days of war, nor the most vulnerable communities that need to import food have the means to unblock a distressing situation. All of which dooms growers to ruin and consumers with no other sources of supply to a devilish mix of rising prices and faminesomething that may bring about an increase in irregular migratory flows from Africa and Asia to Europe.
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It is disturbing because it is inhumane that the impotence of the international community to enforce compliance with what has been agreed predicts an increased precariousness in environments lacking resources to alleviate the consequences of the war in Europe. But the truth is that this is the situation and it is not an exaggeration to say that the engine of globalization has seized. As different analysts point out, the war in Ukraine has exposed the lack of instruments on a global scale to manage the global effects of a crisis with no expiration date.
Not even the possibility that, once the stoppage caused by the bombardment of the port of Odessa has been overcome, the first cargo ships with grain will go to sea will diminish the fear that at any moment the grain will no longer be available for whatever reason. Namely, food guarantees have vanished for tens of millions of people who seemed to be partly protected by the Istanbul agreement. With the well-known aggravating circumstance that there is no alternative to the breadbaskets of Europe, something that gives President Putin an expanded influence to impose his will in scenarios with a dire need for food.