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The flags of Ukraine and Russia surrounded by ears of grain and label with crossed-out inscription "Deal."
Hungry countries vs. Russia
Ukrainian and Western leaders aren’t the only ones criticizing Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered by the UN and Turkey that allows Ukraine to ship grain across the Black Sea to the rest of the world. On Tuesday, a senior official in Kenya’s foreign ministry tweeted that Russia’s decision to exit the Black Sea Grain Initiative is a “stab on the back” (sic) with rising global food prices, one that “disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of Africa already impacted by drought."
That’s not a good sign for a Russian government that’s worked hard in recent months to persuade developing countries that the Kremlin cares more about their well-being than Americans and Europeans do. Russia has insisted that Ukraine’s grain has gone mainly to rich countries, but Ukraine has provided Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen with 625,000 tons of emergency food supplies over the past year as part of the Black Sea agreement, according to the UN.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Russia’s Vladimir Putin wants to return to the deal, as Russia did after a brief suspension last November. More criticism from poorer countries might speed up that reversal.Black Sea grain deal commercial vessels wait to pass the Bosphorus Strait near Istanbul, Turkey.
Russia kills Ukraine grain deal
On Monday, Russia confirmed that the Ukrainian grain deal was "suspended" after the last extension expired. The Kremlin did not give a reason, but the announcement occurred just hours after Moscow claimed that Ukraine had attacked the Kerch bridge connecting the Crimea peninsula to the Russian mainland. Kyiv has denied responsibility.
Although the Russian government denied a connection, this is almost an exact repeat of what happened last October, when Russia temporarily pulled out of the UN- and Turkey-brokered agreement to export Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea following a drone attack on the same bridge. The crossing has been of great symbolic value for the Russians since they annexed Crimea in 2014 and is a crucial artery to support its war effort in southern Ukraine.
Prior to the latest Kerch bridge attack, to extend the grain deal Russia had demanded more exports of ammonia (a key ingredient in fertilizer) and that the EU reconnect the Russian Agriculture Bank to SWIFT, the global electronic payments network. Neither happened before the deadline expired Monday.
The suspension is a very big deal for global food security. For one thing, it’ll disproportionately hurt Global South countries that are highly reliant on imports from the two sunflower superpowers and vulnerable to high food prices. Many of those nations are also Russia’s closest friends across the developing world, which gives Vladimir Putin a strong reason to agree to another extension in the coming days — as he ultimately did the last time the deal fell apart.A Lula supporter watches the presidential runoff election results in Brasilia.
What We’re Watching: Lula wins Brazilian nail-biter, Russia kills Ukraine grain deal
Lula wins a tight victory in Brazil
Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will return to the top job in Brazil after winning the runoff election against sitting President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday. It was, as expected, a very close contest: with 99% of the ballots in, Lula got 50.83% of the vote compared to Bolsonaro's 49.17%.
Lula's tight margin of victory means we’ll keep an eye out for two things. First, he can hardly claim a broad mandate when almost half of Brazil's voters rejected him — something that seemed impossible just two months ago when the leftist Lula was leading the far-right Bolsonaro in the polls by double digits. The result confirms that Brazil is more politically polarized than it's been since the return of democracy in the 1980s and that the right-wing forces that backed Bolsonaro against Lula have staying power.
Second, Bolsonaro did not immediately concede and will likely dispute the result. The question is whether he'll do so by going to court or by urging his supporters and loyalists within the Brazilian military to take to the streets and occupy Congress. A 6 de Janeiro is certainly possible. Buckle up for a rocky transition period until Lula is scheduled to be sworn in on the first day of 2023.
Russia nixes grain deal to punish Ukraine
In response to what it claimed was a Ukrainian attack on its fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Russia announced Saturday it was “indefinitely” backing out of a UN-brokered deal to ship Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports. The agreement, which aimed to ease global food inflation, was unlikely to be renewed when it expired on Nov. 19, as Vladimir Putin had hinted it wasn’t really helping poor countries. He may have a point: UN data indicates that more than half of the shipments were received by rich nations, with only one-fifth going to needier ones in Africa and the Middle East. Still, it’s bad news for Ukraine’s economy — and the global one. Russia walking away from the deal "will put upward pressure on prices of global staple grains, like wheat and corn," tweeted Eurasia Group analyst Peter Ceretti. Check out his thread on the implications and what might happen next.
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