The United States and other leading economies in the Group of Seven nations Sunday agreed to ban or phase out the purchase of Russian oil, directly targeting a major source of income for Moscow to pay for its 10-week invasion of Ukraine.  

“This will hit hard at the main artery of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s economy and deny him the revenue he needs to fund his war,” the G-7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. said after a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  

The U.S. has already ended its purchase of Russian oil, while the 27-nation European  Union, which gets about a quarter of its crude oil imports from Russia, has also announced plans to do likewise. It is still in talks on exactly how to end its reliance on Moscow’s oil.

“Putin has failed in his initial military objective to dominate Ukraine – but he has  

succeeded in making Russia a global pariah,” the White House said in a statement.  

“Today, the United States, the European Union and G7 committed to ratchet up these  costs” with further sanctions targeting “financial elites” in Russia who support Putin, as well as their family members.

The call with Zelenskyy took place on the day the G-7 leaders commemorated the end of World War II in the European theater and as Russia prepared for Monday’s annual celebration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, which it calls Victory Day.

“We remain united in our resolve that President Putin must not win his war against Ukraine,” the G-7 statement said. “We owe it to the memory of all those who fought for freedom in the Second World War.”

The G-7 said Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brings “shame on Russia and the historic sacrifices of its people.”

As part of Sunday’s talks, Washington announced new sanctions against three highly watched Russian state television outlets, saying they “have been among the largest recipients of foreign revenue, which feeds back to the Russian state’s revenue.”

The U.S. also said it would ban Americans from providing financial services to Russian companies to keep elites from building wealth, “thereby generating revenue for Putin’s war machine, and to trying to hide that wealth and evade sanctions.”

The White House statement said the U.S. would also impose further export controls on a wide range of industrial products, to “further limit Russia’s access to items and revenue that could support its military capabilities.”

The U.S. said it has already imposed about 2,600 visa restrictions on Russians and Belarusians in response to what it said was their ongoing efforts to undermine Ukraine. Belarus is one of Russia’s closest allies.

The U.S. government has also sanctioned eight executives at Sberbank, the largest financial institution in Russia; 27 executives from Gazprombank, which handles business by Russia’s Gazprom, one of the largest natural gas exporters in the world; and Moscow Industrial Bank and its 10 subsidiaries.
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Red Soviet flags and orange-and-black striped military ribbons are on display in Russian cities and towns. Neighborhoods are staging holiday concerts. Flowers are being laid by veterans’ groups at monuments to the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in the country.

At first glance, preparations for Monday’s celebration of Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, seem to be the same as ever.

But the mood this year is very different, because Russian troops are fighting and dying again.

And this battle, now in its 11th week, is going on in neighboring Ukraine, against what the government has falsely called a campaign against “Nazis.”

The pride and patriotism usually associated with Russia’s most important holiday, marked by a huge parade of soldiers and military hardware through Red Square, is mixing with apprehension and unease over what this year’s Victory Day may bring.

Some Russians fear that President Vladimir Putin will use it to declare that what the Kremlin has previously called a “special military operation” in Ukraine will now be a full-fledged war — bringing with it a broad mobilization of troops to bolster Russia’s forces.

“I can’t remember a time when the May 9 holiday was anticipated with such anxiety,” historian Ivan Kurilla wrote on Facebook.

Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said Moscow was covertly preparing such a plan. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC Radio that Putin was “laying the ground for being able to say, ‘Look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people.’”

The Kremlin denied having such plans, calling the reports “untrue” and “nonsense.”

Asked by The Associated Press on Friday whether mobilization rumors could dampen the Victory Day mood, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “nothing will cast a shadow” over “the sacred day, the most important day” for Russians.

Still, human rights groups reported a spike in calls from people asking about laws concerning mobilization and their rights in case of being ordered to join the military.

“Questions about who can be called up and how have started to flow on a mass scale through our hotline about the rights of conscripts and the military,” said Pavel Chikov, founder of the Agora legal aid group, on the messaging app Telegram.

Russian state TV has ramped up the patriotic rhetoric. In announcing the Feb. 24 military operation, Putin declared it was aimed at the “demilitarization” of Ukraine to remove a perceived military threat to Russia by “neo-Nazis.”

A recent TV commentary said Putin’s words were “not an abstract thing and not a slogan” and praised Russia’s success in Ukraine, even though Moscow’s troops have gotten bogged down, making only minor gains in recent weeks.

Ukraine, which has a democratically elected Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust, and the West have condemned the remarks as a fictitious cover for a blunt act of aggression.

But many Russians fed a steady diet of the official narrative have cheered on their troops, comparing them to “our grandfathers” who fought the Germans.

Popular support in Russia for the war in Ukraine is difficult to gauge in a country that has seen a steady crackdown on journalists in recent years, with independent media outlets shut down and state-controlled television providing a pervasive influence.

A recent poll by the respected independent Levada Center found that 82% of Russians remain concerned by the military campaign in Ukraine. The vast majority of them – 47% – are worried about the deaths of civilians and Russian soldiers in the war, along with the devastation and suffering. Only 6% of those concerned by the war said they were bothered by the alleged presence of “Nazis” and “fascists” in Ukraine.

“A significant part of the population is horrified, and even those who support the war are in a permanent psychological militant state of a perpetual nightmare,” said political analyst Andrei Kolesnikov in a recent commentary.

A government campaign encouraging support for the military is using the distinctive black-and-orange St. George’s ribbon that is traditionally associated with Victory Day.

The letter “Z” has become a symbol of the conflict, decorating buildings, posters and billboards across Russia, and many forms of it use the ribbon’s colors and pattern.

Rallies supporting the troops have taken place in recent days at World War II memorials, with participants singing wartime songs from the 1940s.

One official has suggested that Victory Day marchers display photos of soldiers now fighting in Ukraine. Normally on the holiday, Russians carry portraits of their relatives who took part in World War II to honor those in the so-called “Immortal Regiment” from a conflict in which the Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people.

 
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Food prices around the world have soared to record levels this year as the Russia-Ukraine war slashes key exports of wheat and fertilizer from those countries, at the same time as droughts, floods and heat fueled by climate change claim more harvests.

Wheat prices hit a 14-year peak in March, and maize prices reached the highest ever recorded, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) said in a report released on Friday.

That has made basic staples more expensive – or harder to find – for families in many countries, especially the poorest.

Climate change, widespread poverty and conflicts are now combining to create “endemic and widespread” risks to global food security – which means higher food prices may be the new normal, unless action is taken to curb the threats, IPES noted.

It suggests not only cutting emissions swiftly to limit climate change but also tackling commodity speculation, giving debt relief, cutting reliance on chemical fertilizers, reshaping trade and shoring up national grain reserves.

If these things are neglected, the world will find itself “sleepwalking into the catastrophic and systematic food crises of the future”, the IPES experts noted.

Why are food prices so high right now?

Russia and Ukraine supply about 30% of global wheat exports, but those have fallen as a result of the conflict.

National stocks of wheat – mostly eaten in the countries where it is grown – remain relatively high, said Brigitte Hugh of the U.S. Center for Climate and Security.

But the drop in exports from Russia and Ukraine has driven up competition for the remaining wheat on the global market, leading to higher costs that are particularly painful for poorer, debt-ridden countries that rely heavily on imports.

Almost 40% of Africa’s wheat imports come from Ukraine and Russia, while rising global wheat prices have sent bread prices in Lebanon 70% higher, IPES said.

But the disruption to wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine is not the whole reason for the price hikes, which have spilled over into maize, rice and soy markets as buyers seek alternative grains.

Spurred by the conflict, financial speculators have leapt into trading in grain futures, for instance, “artificially” inflating prices as they seek to profit from market uncertainty, G7 agriculture ministers have complained.

Since the last food price crises of 2007-2008 and 2011-2012, “governments have failed to curb excessive speculation and ensure transparency of food stocks and commodity markets,” said Jennifer Clapp, a professor specialized in food security at Canada’s University of Waterloo.

The problem “must be urgently addressed” if the world wants to ensure more stable food prices in coming years as climate change, conflict and other threats drive up risks, she added.

Can’t more food be grown to boost global supplies?

Some wheat-growing countries are already planting more, and India has said it will boost exports of wheat to meet demand, although its current heatwave could dent yields, the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit warned.

But efforts to boost production globally have been hampered by shortages of chemical fertilizer. Russia and Belarus produced 40% of international potash exports last year and that trade has also been hit by the war.

Climate change impacts – from droughts and heatwaves to flooding and new pests – also are making it harder for farmers in many parts of the world to get a reliable crop, a problem set to worsen as planet-heating emissions continue to rise.

As well, the land available to plant more wheat, maize and rice is limited, with expansion of farmland – particularly in countries such as Brazil – often coming at the expense of forests that are key to keeping the climate stable.

With a limited supply of land under increasing pressure from those trying to grow food, protect nature, install renewable energy and store carbon, land may become the strategic global asset of this century, said Tim Benton, research director of the environment and society program at think-tank Chatham House.

A desire to control more Ukrainian farmland – and more of the future global food market – could even be one of the drivers of Russia’s invasion, he noted.

What could help keep food affordable?

Because a large share of the world’s grain goes to feeding livestock, persuading people to eat less meat and dairy could boost grain supplies dramatically, said Pierre-Marie Aubert, an agriculture expert at France’s Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations.

The global shortage of cereals on export markets this year is expected to be 20-25 million tonnes – but if Europeans alone cut their consumption of animal products by 10%, they could reduce demand by 18-19 million tonnes, he noted.

Improving grain storage, particularly in countries highly reliant on imports, and helping those countries grow more staple food at home – not the cash crops for export that have often replaced staples – could also help, food experts said.

And globally, planting a wider variety of crops in order to reduce dependence on just a few grains, with markets dominated by a small number of exporters, could boost food security.

Policy shifts – like Africa’s new continental free trade area – could eventually allow some poorer nations to reduce their dependence on distant producers and fragile supply chains, said Sithembile Mwamakamba of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN).

In addition, investing in climate-smart farming, to protect harvests as the planet warms, would help shore up global food supplies, while providing debt relief could give the poorest countries more fiscal space to manage food price fluctuations.

What happens if food prices continue to rise?

As food prices soar on world markets, humanitarian agencies are struggling to buy grain for hungry people in conflict-hit places like Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan and Syria.

The international aid system was already “overwhelmed” by rising need and inadequate funding before the Russia-Ukraine war, and now high prices mean less grain can be bought, said Gernot Laganda, the climate and disaster risk reduction chief at the U.N. World Food Program.

“It has never been this bad,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He fears that, as climate change adds to existing food security threats, price hikes are “a runaway train you can’t stop”.

Worse, as costly food threatens to stoke political unrest and eat up government funds, it could derail efforts to curb climate change and build resilience to its impacts, driving a vicious cycle of ever more poverty, unrest and hunger, he warned.

Benton of Chatham House said the Russia-Ukraine war may trigger a landmark shift in food prices.

“The end of cheap and highly available food, for some people, is going to be very much the reality,” he noted.
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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.

The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:

1:05 a.m.: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says “nearly 200 cultural heritage sites already” had been destroyed or damaged since the Russian invasion began, The New York Times reports.

12:02 a.m.: Kyiv’s mayor says it’ll probably be safer for residents to return to the city after Monday, which is Russia’s Victory Day, The Washington Post reports.

Victory Day marks the Soviet Union’s 1945 victory over Nazi Germany, and there are fears that Russia may use the holiday as a reason to ramp up attacks on Ukraine.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko says about 2.2 million of the city’s normal 3.5 million residents remain.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says global food prices stabilized last month at a very high level but were slightly lower than in March, which saw the highest ever jump in food prices.

FAO officials see little prospect of a significant decrease in the price of food as long as the Russian-Ukrainian war goes on. Both countries combined account for nearly a third of the world’s wheat and barley exports and up to 80% of sunflower seed oil shipments.

The FAO’s deputy director in the markets and trade division, Josef Schmidhuber, said disruption in the export of those and other food commodities from Ukraine is taking a heavy toll on global food security. He said poor countries are suffering most because they are being priced out of the market.

“It is an almost grotesque situation that we see at the moment,” he said. “In Ukraine, there are nearly 25 million tons of grain that could be exported but they cannot leave the country simply because of the lack of infrastructure and the blockade of the ports. At the same time…there is no wheat corridor opening up for exports from Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s summer crop of wheat, barley, and corn will be harvested in July and August. Despite the war, Schmidhuber said harvest conditions are not dire. He said about 14 million tons of grain should be available for export.

However, he notee there is not enough storage capacity in Ukraine. He added there is a great deal of uncertainty about what will happen over the next couple of months as the conflict grinds on.

“And what we also see, and that is, of course, only anecdotal evidence, that grain is being stolen by Russia and is being transported on trucks into Russia,” Schmidhuber said. “The same goes for agricultural implements, tractors, etc., etc. And all that could have a bearing on agricultural output.”

The FAO official said the situation in Ukraine indicates that the current problem is not one of availability, but one of access. He said there is enough grain to go around and feed the world. The problem, he said, is the food is not moving to the places where it is needed.
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Russia’s desire to create a land corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria is drawing attention to Moscow’s efforts to prevent the pro-Russian enclave from deepening ties to the West and undermining the decadeslong Russian grip over part of Moldova, some analysts say.   

Russian General Rustam Minnekaev endorsed the idea of a land corridor on April 22, saying: “Control over the south of Ukraine is another way to [reach] Transnistria,” according to Russian news agency Interfax. He said Transnistria’s Russian-speaking population suffers “oppression,” implying that it needs Russia’s protection from Romanian-speakers in the rest of Moldova.

Moscow has made similar assertions about Russian speakers in Ukraine to justify its invasions of Ukrainian territory since 2014.

Transnistria is a majority Russian-speaking territory that broke away from Moldova in 1990, a year before the majority Romanian-speaking Soviet republic declared independence from the Soviet Union. A 1992 war between Moldovan forces and Transnistrian separatists backed by Russian troops ended with a cease-fire that has remained in effect for 30 years, leaving Transnistria to run its own affairs as a de facto state but without international recognition.

Russia has not recognized the region as a state. But it has helped the separatists for decades to administer a sliver of land on Moldova’s eastern edge, between the east bank of the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border. Transnistria has a population of 300,000 to 400,000 according to Moldovan and separatist estimates, respectively.

Russia’s support for the separatist region has prolonged what some observers call a “frozen conflict” that has kept Moldova too weak to join major Western institutions. Moscow has long regarded the expansion of the NATO alliance and European Union into post-Soviet states such as Moldova as a threat to its security.

Moscow’s main support for Transnistria has taken the form of providing it with free Russian natural gas, a presence of about 1,500 Russian troops and bank transfers of Russian funds. 

But Transnistria has been reorienting its trade toward the EU since the bloc signed a free trade agreement with Moldova in 2014. That deal granted the enclave tariff-free exports to the EU under certain rules and visa-free travel to the EU for residents with Moldovan passports. 

As the separatists’ trade with the EU rose in recent years, their trade with Russia declined. 

Former U.S. ambassador to Moldova Asif Chaudhry told VOA Russian that the 2014 agreement has opened people’s minds on the Transnistrian side. “They see that it is to their economic and personal benefit to have a better relationship with the Republic of Moldova,” he said. 

One way Russia has tried to counter that trend is by providing the separatist region with free natural gas from Moscow-controlled energy company Gazprom through pipelines crossing Ukrainian territory.

Transnistria, which is poor in natural resources, uses the gas to produce electricity and metal products that it sells to customers in similarly resource-poor Moldova and to foreign customers at market prices, according to Moldovan energy analyst Sergiu Tofilat, who served as an energy adviser to Moldova’s president from 2020 to 2021.

Speaking to VOA Ukrainian from Moldova, Tofilat said separatist authorities relied on income from natural gas-derived products for 53% of their budgetary spending in 2019 and for 40% in 2020.

In a study he published in 2020, Tofilat also found that the value of the Russian gas obtained by Transnistria was equivalent to 48% of its gross domestic product from 2007 to 2016.

“Half of the Transnistrian economy survives only due to the gas subsidy from Russia,” he told VOA.

Russia also maintains influence over the enclave with a deployment of about 1,500 troops, said former Moldovan defense minister Vitalie Marinutsa, who served in the role from 2009 to 2014. He spoke to VOA Russian in Moldova on May 3.

Several hundred of those Russian troops serve under the authority of a peacekeeping force known as a Joint Control Commission that also includes Moldovan and separatist personnel. The rest of the Russian contingent guards a major depot of Soviet-era ammunition near the village of Cobasna and trains separatist paramilitaries.

Another tool of Russian influence is the use of banks to wire Russian funds to the separatist region. 

Tatsiana Kulakevich, a Russia researcher at the University of South Florida, told VOA that Moscow wires the funds to the separatist government owned Transnistrian Sberbank to provide pensions to residents. Transnistrian Sberbank is part of the correspondent network of Russia’s largest bank, also named Sberbank.

Kulakevich said she does not see any threat to Russia’s ability to transfer money to the separatist region, as Moscow has been using its own network to facilitate transactions and shield itself from Western sanctions targeting Russian banks’ use of the SWIFT international financial messaging system.  

But Russia’s policy of making Transnistria dependent on it for free natural gas to generate electricity could create problems for the enclave in the coming years, as Moldova looks to reduce its own dependence on that electricity, Tofilat said.

“Moldova’s government has decided to construct a high-voltage power line that will connect us with Romania and diversify our electricity supplies. This will take another three years,” he said.

Russia also faces difficulties in keeping its military presence in the separatist region supplied with personnel and weapons.

Since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and invaded its eastern Donbas region in 2014, Ukrainian authorities have cracked down on Russian smuggling of people and arms into Transnistria, whose border with Ukraine is porous, Kulakevich said.

“News reports suggest the Ukrainians are better guarding the border, but it’s hard to control completely,” she said.

Moldova also has tried to block Russia from sending military personnel to the separatist region through Moldovan government-controlled territory.

“We have taken steps to ensure that this military exchange [of personnel] does not take place,” said Anatol Salaru, a former Moldovan defense minister who served from 2015 to 2016, in an interview with VOA sister TV network Current Time last month.

Russia also has no simple way to supply its forces in Transnistria by air. The enclave’s only airfield, a former Soviet military base near its self-styled capital Tiraspol, has not been in operation for more than 30 years, according an April 27 article by Ukrainian news site European Pravda.

Ukrainian national news agency Ukrinform reported on April 6 that authorities in Tiraspol were preparing the airfield to receive aircraft. It did not elaborate on whether the preparations were for military or civilian flights.

One of the shortest paths for Russian aircraft to reach Tiraspol would be to fly from one of the airfields in Russian-occupied Crimea over the Black Sea toward the separatist region. But that would entail flying through at least 40 kilometers of Ukrainian airspace.

Sergey Bratchuk, a spokesman for Ukrainian military forces in the Odesa region bordering Transnistria, said in an April 30 Telegram post that they had received new air defense systems to use against Russia.

Speaking earlier this week, as reported by the BBC, Bratchuk had this warning for Russian aircraft attempting the journey to Tiraspol: “We have the right to shoot them down over the territory of Ukraine. These are enemy planes [attempting] enemy landings.”

Alex Yanevskyy reported from Moldova.
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