Ukraine has warned that the world faces a critical food shortage unless Russia lifts its Black Sea port blockade, as improvements to other transport options would only enable it to deliver a fraction of its total grain stockpile.
Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, told the Financial Times that “all of our activity won’t cover even 20 per cent of what we could do through the Black Sea ports”.
Ukraine and its western allies are searching for ways to get up to 20mn tonnes of grain out of the country and clear storage space for this year’s harvest. The crisis threatens tens of millions of people in countries across the Middle East and Africa that rely on Ukraine’s cereals.