US, Russia clash over cause of food price rises

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere even worse by invading Ukraine, calling it just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia's unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world's most vulnerable. Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Thursday told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen that the World Food Program identified the Arab world's poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine.

Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky shot back saying: The main factor for instability and the source of the problem is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but sanctions measures imposed on our country seeking to cut off any supplies from Russia and the supply chain, apart from those supplies that those countries in the West need, in other words energy.  If you really want to help the world avoid a food crisis you should lift the sanctions that you yourselves imposed, your sanctions of choice indeed, and poor countries will immediately feel the difference, he said. And if you're not prepared to do that, then don't get involved in demagoguery, and don't mislead everybody.

The sharp exchange took place a day after a U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.