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The United States condemned Russia for pulling out of a United Nations-brokered deal to allow Ukraine to export grain after Moscow blamed Kyiv for orchestrating a drone attack against its Black Sea Fleet near Crimea.
The European Union called on Russia to reverse its decision and allow the grain shipments, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky characterized the move as a threat to cause “large-scale famine to Africa and Asia.”
“It’s really outrageous,” President Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday. “There’s no merit to what they’re doing. The UN negotiated that deal and that should be the end of it.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of “weaponizing food” in the war it launched against Ukraine on Feb. 24.
“Any act by Russia to disrupt these critical grain exports is essentially a statement that people and families around the world should pay more for food or go hungry,” Blinken said in a statement released Saturday by the State Department.
”In suspending this arrangement, Russia is again weaponizing food in the war it started, directly impacting low- and middle-income countries and global food prices, and exacerbating already dire humanitarian crises and food insecurity,” he said.
