ODESA, Ukraine— One year ago, just as I arrived in this historic port city, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to stop blockading Ukraine's grain exports and fueling a famine in Africa and the Middle East.
The day after signing the U.N.-brokered deal, Russians shelled Odesa's port facilities, as if to warn: "Don't think this deal protects you."
Exactly one year later, I returned to Odesa just as Russia pulled out of the deal, once again threatening global food supplies. Putin is playing a game of food blackmail, trying to get Western countries to loosen sanctions on certain Russian banks if they want the Ukrainian grain to start flowing again. Canada rightly called the renewed blockade "the weaponization of hunger by the Russian Federation."
As I wrote back then, and reemphasize now, if any Western leaders still nurse fantasies about talks with Putin to end his war on Ukraine, his disdain for the grain deal proves they are fools.
And once again, Putin's hunger games are reinforced with missiles. Tuesday's deafening attack in the middle of the night with drones and cruise missiles — the harshest on Odesa since the war began — destroyed most storage facilities for sunflower oil and some grain silos. One civilian building hit by flak from the shot-down missiles was near my interpreter's apartment.
Locals were warned that more missile attacks were expected Wednesday evening.
Russia claimed the strikes were a response to Ukraine's sea-drone attack Monday on the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimea Peninsula. Don't believe it.
Putin is sending two messages: First, if the world doesn't pay his price, he is willing to starve poor nations. Second, if he is not permitted to control Odesa, he is willing to destroy it — and damn any repercussions to a grain-hungry world.
For many years, the imperial-minded Putin has been obsessed with Odesa because it was founded in the late 18th century by Russian empress Catherine the Great, who is one of his role models.
However, Ukraine's largest port was never really an ethnic Russian city. Its harbor was built by a Spaniard, its first governor was a French aristocrat, and its longtime position as an international trade center produced a diverse population. Before World War II, about 30% of Odesans were Jewish. Today, it is flooded with refugees from Russian attacks on eastern cities and towns and the horrific flooding caused by Moscow's criminal destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River.
Although the city has been battered, it has kept its special spirit, as I saw when roaming the streets on the day the grain deal died. Mothers and children still eat ice cream by the small pool in the city park, young women parade their chic fashions, and the elderly watch the young. But the city is strangely quiet. The tourists are gone, and many residents have fled.
Odesa is a port city. It cannot live, nor can the country's farmers continue to plant its famed grains and sunflowers, if the Russian blockade is maintained. Ukraine will be virtually landlocked, its economy permanently undermined.
Yet the Russian Black Sea fleet has effectively taken over control of the southern Black Sea and the connected Sea of Azov, blocking not only Ukrainian grain but other key exports. Seven countries border the Black Sea — including NATO members Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria — and Russia's militarization of the sea is illegal under international law.
Amazingly, NATO nations, including the United States, have let Russia get away with this takeover. China's Xi Jinping, who is trying to do the same with the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits, is watching closely. He is waiting to see if the West, and the United Nations, will bow to Putin's food blackmail and ease sanctions to reinstate the grain deal.
As I walked on a breakwater looking out at the Black Sea with Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament from Odesa, I asked him how he thought NATO nations should respond to Russia's actions.
Looking out at the threatened harbor in the distance, he responded in anger. "Why did the free world let this happen?" he asked with vehemence, pointing out that Moscow essentially militarized the Black Sea when it seized Crimea in 2014 and made the peninsula into an armed dagger pointing at Ukraine.
Goncharenko believes that Turkey, a NATO member and cosponsor of the grain deal, should provide armed escorts for grain ships. Ideally, Istanbul would permit an exception to the 1936 Montreux Convention, which controls maritime traffic through the straits joining the Mediterranean and Black Seas (and bans most warships). This would permit other NATO members to join Turkey in protecting the grain ships from Russian attack.
"Why doesn't the free world say to Putin ‘just try' to attack ships under Turkish, British, and U.S. flags?" Goncharenko asked. "Putin sees this NATO hesitation. So why can't he use the same kind of blackmail in the Baltic Sea? Why can't Xi do the same in the South China Sea?"
Goncharenko is asking the right questions. But he was rebuffed by political officials from NATO countries when he tried to raise the convoy issue at the recent summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. It appears that everyone is waiting and hoping that Turkey can somehow talk Putin into reentering the deal when he visits Ankara in August.
I believe it will take much more Western pressure, including at the U.N. General Assembly, to end Putin's hunger games. Perhaps only NATO armed grain convoy escorts can do so. If the West gives in to Putin's food blackmail, we will all pay a price — and it will be far dearer than the increased cost of grain.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Trudy Rubin
Philadelphia Inquirer
(TNS)
Previously:
• 07/19/23: Can Ukraine win the war against Russia? I'm traveling there to find out
• 07/17/23: From hell to Harvard: One Ukrainian's escape and how you can help fulfill her dreams
• 07/11/23: At the NATO summit in Vilnius: Will Biden seize or squander the chance to end Putin's war on Ukraine?
• 04/21/23: The Pentagon documents leak will embolden Putin as he tries to outlast Ukraine
• 03/22/23: The Russian attack on a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone underlines why we must help Ukraine win
• 03/15/23: Will the White House have the courage to propel a Ukrainian victory this year?
• 02/21/23: On the first anniversary of Putin's invasion, Ukraine fights on for its independence and for the security of the West
• 02/17/23: A former Pakistani leader's death, and his wise peace plan that failed
• 02/09/23: Earthquakes killed nearly 12,000 people this week. Three men are partly to blame
• 01/24/23: As Russia murders civilians in Dnipro, why won't NATO send weapons that could end the war?
• 12/28/22: What Zelensky worried about when he addressed a cheering Congress
• 12/13/22: The US-China conflict to watch is the Chip War --- which centers on Taiwan
• 09/14/22: Ukraine scores sudden breakthrough that should energize Western support
• 09/09/22: Queen Elizabeth's death deprives Britain and the world of a rock of stability
• 09/08/22: After Gorbachev's death, Putin wants the world to know he is the 'anti-Gorbi'
• 08/26/22: 6 months after Russia's war vs. Ukraine began, the West still won't give Kiev the weapons to win
• 08/15/22: Ukraine's civilian volunteers work to give aid and rebuild, even as Russia continues to bomb them
• 08/08/22: A trip near the front lines finds Ukrainian troops ready for a battle that could decide the war
• 06/13/22: The critical battles for Ukraine and for America are being fought right here, right now
• 05/02/22: Save Odesa to save the world from hunger and high food prices
• 05/02/22: Bloodless Ukrainian War, not utopian fantasy says one-time largest foreign investor in Russia
• 04/11/22: The only way to end Putin's war crimes
• 03/28/22: Don't let Putin's nuclear and chemical threats stop us from giving Ukraine what it needs
• 03/24/22: An elegy for Mariupol, where I walked six weeks ago. Now razed by Russian bombs
• 03/18/22: Zelensky's brilliant speech should impel Biden and Congress to protect Ukrainian skies
• 03/11/22: Mariupol's bombed maternity hospital exemplifies why NATO should protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/10/22: No 'no-fly zone'? Then NATO must find another way to protect Ukraine's skies
• 03/07/22: The third World War has already started in Ukraine. Europe and the US should wake up
• 03/04/22:Putin must be stopped from turning Kiev into Aleppo
• 03/02/22:Why is Belarus helping Russia invade Ukraine? An explainer on the latest in the conflict
• 02/25/22: What the UN should finally do about Russia
• 02/24/22: Why Putin's Ukraine aggression will change the world --- an explainer on how we got here
• 02/10/22: Ukrainian civilians train for war with cardboard guns: 'We are scared but we are ready
• 01/13/22:Putin wants to reestablish the Russian empire. Can NATO stop him without war?
• 12/10/21: Can Biden and NATO prevent Putin from invading Ukraine? Summit puts it to the test
• 12/02/21: Boris Johnson stirs up new Irish Troubles for his own personal political gains
• 11/22/21: Xi Jinping thinks America is on the rocks. Is he correct?
• 08/18/21: President Biden, get our Afghan allies on evacuation planes
• 08/18/21:The horror of Afghan women abandoned by Biden's troop pullout
• 08/09/21:China is pushing a big COVID-19 lie that makes a new pandemic harder to prevent
• 05/27/21: Punish Belarus leader for Ryanair hijacking before air piracy becomes dictators' new tool
• 04/14/21: Can Beethoven temper the political tensions between US and China?
• 06/01/20: US must stand with Hong Kong against Beijing's efforts to crush its freedoms
• 05/20/20: COVID-19 offers a chance to halt Iran's hostage diplomacy
• 05/21/14: Newscycle spurs visit to country my family fled
• 04/21/14: Blind to Putin's strategy?
• 12/24/13: Obama's Syrian indifference has led to more death and destruction. Meet some real heroes
• 12/13/13: Where liberals have come to love the military
• 12/09/13: The China strategy
• 11/05/13: Return to Iraq is worth a close look
• 10/01/13: Obama's call to Iran: Who was really on the line?
• 09/11/13: How Obama got Syria so wrong
• 07/24/13: It's time for Obama to tell Putin 'nyet'
• 05/15/13: What Russia gave Kerry on Syria --- very little
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.