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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the US will build temporary silos on Poland’s border with Ukraine to facilitate the export of grain out of the war-torn nation and address surging food prices amid Russia’s invasion.
“We’re going to build silos, temporary silos in the borders of Ukraine, including in Poland. So we can transfer [grain] from those cars into those silos into cars in Europe and get it out into the ocean, and get it out across the world. But it’s taking time,” Biden said in a speech at the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia, where he discussed potential solutions to rising food prices across the country.
US and Western officials have been exploring efforts to build temporary silos in Ukraine and other nations as a means to quickly scale up grain storage capacity in Ukraine, where a Russian naval blockade is holding back more than 25 million tons of grain from the world food supply. Russia’s blockade in the Black Sea has upended global trade routes while threatening to financially strangle Ukraine and deepen hunger crises around the world. In the next month, Ukrainian farmers will start harvesting the summer wheat harvest, but won’t have anywhere to store it, Ukrainian officials have warned.
US officials and lawmakers are also worried that food shortages, along with rising fuel and food prices, could spark mass starvation, political unrest and migration across parts of Africa, the Middle East and, possibly, Central America, in the coming months.
Biden said Tuesday that the grain can’t be shipped out through the Black Sea “because it’ll get blown out of the water” by Russia’s naval blockade. The US for now has ruled out sending military ships into the region, which would risk Russian retaliation.
Biden noted the US has been working on a plan to export the grain through other countries by rail but acknowledged the overland routes are rife with logistical problems. Rail routes can only move a fraction of the grain that Ukraine normally exports from its Black Sea ports and Ukrainian trains operate on a wider rail gauge than that used by the rest of the tracks in Europe. Biden suggested building silos is a better option for now and could help Ukraine buy some time.
Talks are ongoing between the United Nations and Russia, and separately with Turkey, which aims to broker a deal with Russia to allow Ukraine to restart grain exports via the Black Sea. But Biden administration officials and US lawmakers are skeptical of Russia’s efforts, since Moscow is demanding sanctions relief in return.
“It’s hard to view the Russian offers in good faith considering how they are actively and intentionally destroying food products in Ukraine and exacerbating global food insecurity,” a US official recently told POLITICO.
Russian forces are continuing to target Ukraine’s grain silos and agricultural infrastructure, while stealing grain from the country, US and Ukrainian officials have said.
“Russia, we believe, has stolen several hundred thousand tons of grain from Ukraine and then sent it out on small ships from Russian ports,” Jim O’Brien, the State Department’s head of sanctions, recently told POLITICO and other reporters. “Now, that grain has ended up with Russia’s friends.”
Source: Politico
