Will Ukraine succumb to Russia to save the global food basket?

Lviv - With

its agricultural livestock resources and the volume of its food exports, Ukraine is a world food basket and a major global exporter of grains, oils, vegetables, fish, poultry meat and others.

However, the ongoing war in it raises questions about the possibility of being exposed to the risk of spreading hunger, especially in the areas that witness the heaviest bombing and clashes.

The first warnings issued in this regard from the capital, Kyiv, came on the first day of the war (February 24 last), when its municipality announced that food stocks would suffice the city for a period ranging between one and two weeks only.

But the need arose quickly on the second day of the war, when the shops emptied of basic materials, especially bread and flour, noting that Ukraine occupies the sixth place in the world in grain exports.

supplies dwindle

For the capital, Kyiv, the problem lies in the decline in the city's supply from warehouses in the suburbs, due to bombings and other security risks, and this includes - in addition to food - medicine and fuel.

In Kyiv, the authorities also confirm that the Russian forces deliberately bombed warehouses of foodstuffs, fuel and others, and the last of that was yesterday morning, Saturday, by targeting a warehouse for frozen goods in the vicinity of the city of Brovary (northeast of the capital) and fuel stores near the city of Vasilkov in the southwest of it.

To partially solve this problem, outside Kyiv observes convoys of trucks escorted by police and army cars to guard them, but this does not prevent the city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, from acknowledging that the city is besieged little by little, and that difficult days await them.

Siege to subjugate cities

The Ukrainian authorities publicly accuse their Russian counterpart of imposing a siege on other regions and cities, to starve and subjugate their residents, and the main example that Ukrainians present today in this regard relates to the city of Mariupol (southeast of the country) before others.

Kyiv asserts that the city's situation is "catastrophic", and that the siege and bombardments have prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being displaced, and have cut off food and medicine for a week, as well as depriving it of electricity, water and heating.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared what is happening in Mariupol to what Russia did in Syria, stressing that the city's residents are being punished for their resistance and refusal to flee from it to Russia or to neighboring areas controlled by pro-Russians in the Donbass region.

The situation is very similar in both the city of Kharkiv (east of the country), the second largest city in Ukraine, and the city of Chernihiv (northeast of the capital, Kyiv).

The Ukrainians have always been proud of the “borsch” soup of all kinds, which they consider a trademark of their cuisine, especially since all its ingredients are local and are cheap and available all year round, due to the fact that most of them are rootstocks that grow underground and everywhere.

But potatoes, beets and cabbage are absent today from store shelves, not to mention the absence of all kinds of meat, which reminds them of the tragedy of the "Holodomor" famine imposed by Soviet leader Stalin on Ukraine in the thirties of the last century, and recognized by many countries as a "crime of genocide".

"Our villages are no longer what they used to be, we do not have cows and livestock, as many think, we rely primarily on buying companies' goods and on what we grow in plots of land," Oleksandra told Al Jazeera Net - a resident of the village of Haverilovka, which includes about 5,000 people (northwest of Kyiv) -. small".

And she continues, "We did not imagine that this would happen again, and that we might think about eating potato peels as our grandparents did before, we were selling what we produced, and we did not have enough left."

And she added, "We are completely surrounded and we cannot get out. The Russian soldiers deal with us as the Soviets did before, so they ask us for food from time to time, and we offer it - as I say it - for fear of punishment," she said.

She concluded, "The communication networks are weak, and we have been living for a week without electricity, heating, gas, or internet. We have 15 liters of gasoline left in the fuel tank of the car in which we charge phones, and then we will be completely isolated from the world."

The shortage has reached the western regions

Because of the displacement of millions to the "more secure" regions of western Ukraine, shoppers also feel a shortage of basic food commodities and fuel, especially since their supplies were and still depend on the central and eastern regions of the country.

In an attempt to fill this shortfall, the local authorities of the major western cities (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Vinnytsia, and Uzhhorod) allocate special highways for cargo trucks that bypass the stifling traffic jams caused by the displacement convoys.

Some authorities also set specific quantities for the purchase of some goods, with tighter control over prices and control as much as possible so that they would be accessible to everyone, and in this regard warned "manipulators" that they would deal with them as they would deal with "enemies".