Vladimir Putin’s blockade of Black Sea ports will push millions across the world into starvation, a Ukrainian MP warned today.
Kira Rudik, leader of the opposition liberal Golos party, said countries reliant on Ukraine’s cereals face famine unless Russia’s blockade is lifted.
Kyiv has accused Russia of blockading agricultural exports from Ukraine, known as the “breadbasket of Europe”.
Nearly all of the country’s grain exports are sat in storage - threatening the lives of millions of people and contributing to a global food crisis.
Rudik also warned Brits that their cost of living crisis was “directly related” to the war in Ukraine, in an exclusive interview with HuffPost UK.
“As of today, the world has 10 weeks of grain supplies,” she said. “So it puts a hard deadline on what needs to happen on unblocking the ports.”
Asked what will happen if the food cannot get out soon, she replied: “Famine. Famine in some of the African countries. Russia took a lot of our grain and they will try to sell it and probably will be successful in that.
“But it will not cover it. Before the war Ukraine was in the top three world producers of wheat, grains, sunflower oil. The first question people are ask me when I’m here in the UK, is where is the sunflower oil?
“I can tell you where sunflower oil is, it’s in Ukraine, blocked. So are tomatoes and corn.
“The upcoming issue that we’re facing is that right now 85 per cent of the plants have been sown.
“So in Autumn we will have another harvest but we don’t have fuel to actually collect it. And we will not have fuel to move it anywhere.”
Asked if she believed Putin was willing to let people starve, she replied: “Is there any sense that he’ll be supporting otherwise?
“It’s a part of his strategy, it’s part of his propaganda when he’s saying that Ukraine wants to starve the world. He’s saying ‘it’s not on us’.”
Her stark warning echoes that of the UK’s Ministry of Defence which said Russia was prepared to leverage global food security for its own political aim.
“Russia has demonstrated is it prepared to leverage global food security for its own political aim and then present itself as the reasonable actor and blame the west for any failure,” they said.
Meanwhile, David Beasley, head of the World Food Programme, warned the UN that failure to open ports in Odesa would be a “declaration of war on global food security”.
“This is not just about Ukraine, this is about the poorest of the poor around the world who are on the brink of starvation as we speak,” he added.
Rudik said she believed Putin will continue his mission to recreate a “Greater Russia” and described his strategy as a “salami technique” slicing away at Ukraine.
She said it was on the west to stop him, adding: “He’s playing a game of chess and the western world is playing second hand right now.
“Putin is leading the strategy and making the world respond. There isn’t an active idea from anybody who calls themselves a leader.”
The MP said the UK’s cost of living crisis was “directly related” to what was happening in Ukraine and called on Brits to put pressure on the government.
“I want you to remember that right now, all the struggles and hurdles economically are all related and the result of the war in Ukraine,” she said.
“We intend to fight to the end. We are not giving up our soil, but the whole world will suffer and it's actually on the world how long that suffering will last.”
- Kira Rudik
“So every time you don’t see the sunflower oil in your store, it is because our ports are blocked. Every time that you see your energy bill going up, it is the result of the war in Ukraine and Putin.
“In Autumn, which I believe will be harder and worse if the cost of living goes up, it’s also the result of war in Ukraine.
“At some point everybody will start asking this question of how do we get to the end? And I can tell you that there is no way of getting to the end other than winning this war for Ukraine.
“We intend to fight to the end. We are not giving up our soil, but the whole world will suffer and it’s actually on the world how long that suffering will last.”
Rudik also anticipates that Putin will use energy “as a weapon” and added: “We’re getting closer and closer to the heating season in Europe and if we think that Putin is a nasty bastard right now, guess what will happen when it’s cold outside and it’s an illusion hoping that he will become more negotiable.”
On the second day of the war in Ukraine, Rudik was pictured holding a Kalashnikov rifle, saying she was prepared to use it to defend Kyiv. “Our women will protect our soil the same way as our men,” she wrote.
Asked about the impact the war was having on her personally, she described a recent visit to Poland when she went jogging.
“There was an ambulance passing by with a siren on and I realised that I’m laying on the ground with my hands covering my head.
“I didn’t even realise. I came up to my senses when I was already there [on the ground].”
Asked if she thought it was PTSD, Rudik replied: “Yeh, I will be fine. I’m a grown-up woman, I am firm, I’m a strong woman, I’m a politician, I have seen stuff.
“So it’s somewhere deep inside made this trauma that we’ll have to fix.
“Probably realising it and understanding it is the first step but, can you imagine, the whole population has been traumatised to the point they know not to trust that their home can be permanent.
“We have so many traumatised children I cannot begin to tell you, starting from the physical impact to the psychological one.”
Rudik said she plays a game of “turtle” with her children when they hear air raid sirens they get on the floor, cover their ears and pretend to be a turtle.
Another game they play is making butterfly shapes on their windows with tape - which prevents the glass shattering everywhere during a bomb blast.
The party leader is in the UK for a few days where she is meeting MPs in London and Scotland.
Her main objective is to call for the powerful M270 rocket system, a strategy to unblock the ports and visas for Ukrainian refugees.
She also said she was worried the world was losing interest in Ukraine, adding: “Psychologically people tend to grow numb to other people suffering.
“You get used to bombarding, to air raid sirens, the same way you get used to people being killed every single day and this is terrible.
“This is something that we should be psychologically aware of. This should not continue happening.”
Asked what her message was to ordinary Brits, she replied: “Thank you. This has been such an amazing time - when people we don’t know and have never met - have opened their homes for us. I’m so grateful for that.”