“We will only supply food and agricultural products to our friends. Fortunately we have a lot of them, and they are not in Europe or North America at all,” Deputy Head of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Sunday.
Medvedev stressed that the priority in food supplies will be for the local market and control of prices, pointing out that the agricultural supplies of friends will be in rubles, or in their national currencies at agreed rates.
Medvedev’s comments come after Moscow recently demanded that foreign buyers pay for Russian gas in rubles, in response to the freezing of Russia’s assets in the West due to its attack on Ukraine.
Africa is Russia’s alternative destination
Keith Boyfield, a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, says that Russia has started to use its weapons successively against the West, starting with energy and then agricultural crops, in response to the economic sanctions that were imposed on it with the start of the war in Ukraine.
Boyfield added in statements to “Sky News Arabia”: “But if its decision (Russia) is implemented, it needs to urgently find new markets in order to provide sources of income, because it is subject to sanctions in Europe and the United States.”
He continued, “We will see a campaign to supply countries like Syria and Lebanon that desperately need the grain and did not criticize the Russian attack. Half of Africa has stayed on the sidelines on the war, so I expect we will see a major Russian sales campaign to Africa.”
He pointed out, “The possibility of doing as it did with gas to sell it at reduced prices to attract new customers in Africa and the Middle East.”
List of unfriendly countries
On March 7, the Russian government announced the creation of a list of “unfriendly” countries, which includes “countries that have imposed or acceded to sanctions” against Russia against the backdrop of the Ukraine war.
The list includes: the United States, Canada, European Union countries, Britain, Ukraine, Montenegro, Switzerland, Albania, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Macedonia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Micronesia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan, while the list did not include any Arab or African country.
According to the “New York Times”, an “imminent disaster” threatens the world represented in the shortage of basic foodstuffs, after the war affected the exports of wheat and major grains from both countries, which are a major source of it.
The newspaper pointed out that a large share of global wheat, corn and barley are trapped in Russia and Ukraine due to the war, while a greater amount of global fertilizer is stuck in Russia and Belarus. The result is rising global food and fertilizer prices.
The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine threatens to destroy WFP’s efforts to provide food to about 125 million people globally, because Ukraine has moved “from the world’s breadbasket to a country whose citizens stand queuing for bread.”
Russia’s food exports
The volume of agricultural exports from Russia in 2021 reached $37.7 billion, according to data from the Agroexport Center of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture.
Thus, these exports rose in 2021 by $7.2 billion compared to 2020, when agricultural products exports amounted to $30.5 billion.
Cereal crops occupied the largest share in total agricultural exports, as grains were exported with a value of $11.441 billion, an increase in 2021 of 12 percent over 2020.
According to the data, the European Union came as the largest importer of Russian agricultural products, as the EU countries bought agricultural products from Russia in 2021 worth $4.716 billion, an increase of 41 percent from 2020.
Wheat is more than weapons
After the European Union, Turkey came in second place, which imported agricultural products from Russia with a value of $4.33 billion (an increase in 2021 by 38 percent compared to 2020), while China ranked third, as it imported Russian agricultural products worth $3.554 billion.
It is noteworthy that the value of agricultural exports exceeded the value of Russian arms exports by about 1.5 times, as data indicate that the exports of Russian arms and military equipment amounted to an average of about 13 billion dollars.
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