By Fred Weir and Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, 7/26/22

The agreement between Russia and Ukraine to allow the safe export of up to 20 million tons of Ukrainian wheat and other grains offers hope of easing an acute global food crisis and comes as especially good news for people in the Horn of Africa.

From Ethiopia to Eritrea and Kenya, high food prices and staples shortages have contributed to several of the world’s most dire hunger hotspots. In recent years, Eritrea has relied on Ukraine for virtually all its wheat imports.

But the grain export deal – brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, and the first major accord between the two bitter antagonists since Russia’s invasion Feb. 24 – will only help stave off looming famine in Somalia, for example, if it is allowed to work as spelled out in the agreement, and relatively quickly, experts say.

On one hand, events suggest the deal reached Friday may be offering as much false hope as genuine relief from a crisis that experts say has left more than 800 million people in some state of food insecurity.

Indeed Saturday, within hours of signing the deal, Russia sent missiles crashing into the Black Sea port of Odesa, one of several Ukrainian ports that under the deal could resume safely shipping grains to global markets. On Monday Ukraine, citing the missile attacks, said it would seek additional security guarantees to pursue implementation of the agreement.

“Yes, if the deal pulls off exactly as described it will be helpful, but it won’t make the food crisis go away,” says Daniel Maxwell, professor in Food Security at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition.

Noting that world food prices were already at critically high levels last year, Dr. Maxwell says Russia’s war in Ukraine has combined with existing drought and conflict to create a perfect storm of food supply disruption. Returning the two breadbaskets to the global market would ease pressure on supplies and prices – but first the deal has to work.

And “as the … attacks on Odesa show,” he says, “it is unlikely to pull off exactly as described.”

At the same time, others say, the world should not lose sight of the hope the deal offers, not just for easing the global food crisis, but potentially for encouraging more diplomatic breakthroughs in the five-month-old war.

Despite the attack on Odesa’s port, which Russia justified as intended for a military target, Ukraine’s deputy minister for infrastructure, Yuriy Vaskov, told reporters Monday that within two weeks he expects all Black Sea ports to be consistently exporting agricultural products.

More broadly, implementation of the agreement is going to require continuing contacts among the deal’s four signatories, which some say at least opens the door to further cooperation and diplomacy.

“The most important thing, the channels of cooperation are now open,” says Waheguru Pal Sidhu, an expert in international relations and U.N. diplomatic efforts at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

“The process of implementation of this deal means that all four parties will have to remain engaged, and we know from experience that over time, such mechanisms can build cooperation and even respect,” he says. “So I wouldn’t say categorically that this is just a one off, because potentially it could expand into other conversations.”

“Beacon in the Black Sea”

Under the deal, Russia would lift its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports for verified food shipments, while Ukraine would remove mines it placed in its waters to repel a Russian sea invasion. Ukraine grain shipments would resume by sea through Turkey, while the U.N. would assist Russia with its own grain and fertilizer shipments.

The deal was the first sign of diplomacy working in Russia’s war, with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres calling it a “beacon in the Black Sea.”

But if weeks of negotiations involving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mr. Guterres finally succeeded, it was not so much because the two sides are ready for diplomacy to stop the fighting, analysts say, but because the deal gives each side things they desperately wanted.

Ukraine, which normally supplies about 12% of wheat on the global market, is anxious to empty its stuffed grain silos before spoilage sets in and the summer harvest swings into full gear.

Russia wants to resume exporting grains and fertilizers as well, but it has another motivation, experts say: Sensitive to global perceptions, Moscow was keenly aware that the Western charge it was “weaponizing food” was taking root.

“This is important for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, he has consistently argued that Russia is a responsible player that is always willing to meet its obligations, as long as no obstacles are set up by its opponents,” says Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry. “Russia has long been trying to convince the global community that this conflict is not the main cause of the food crisis. It may be a catalyst, but the crisis is much deeper.”

Yet the viability of the grain deal remains burdened by the still intense military conflict.

The United States has widely shared declassified intelligence and satellite imagery confirming the Russian Navy’s mining of the ports of Odesa and Ochakiv, while offering evidence that Russia mined the Dnipro River intending to cut off maritime trade. Last week Britain’s Foreign Office condemned what it said was Russia’s shelling of civilian infrastructure, including grain shipment facilities, aimed at halting grain exports and in turn laying waste to the next harvest.

For some analysts, Russia’s missile attacks on Odesa’s port were not so much aimed at jettisoning the deal, but at reminding Ukraine that deal or no deal, it remains capable of striking anywhere it chooses.

Russian message to Africa

Others say the timing of Russia’s acceptance of the deal may not have been coincidental: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is currently on a visit to Africa, where he is able to show this deal as a practical demonstration to regional leaders that Russia is concerned about the food shortages and taking action to remedy the situation.

“Lavrov has many things to discuss with African leaders, but food is one of those issues that Russia can leverage to its advantage,” says Mr. Kortunov. “The timing of this deal is fortuitous, and the pieces fall together pretty well. Putin gets the deal, and Lavrov can emphasize it in his meetings in Africa.”

Like Professor Sidhu, some Russian experts cite the increasingly acrimonious information war, noting that Moscow cares very much what countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa think, if not the West.

“Being blamed for world starvation is not what Russia would like,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal. “But Russian leaders seem to care less and less about accusations hurled against them by the West.”

In any case, many Russian analysts say they give the grain deal good odds of succeeding – because all parties have an interest in it, and despite the Odesa attack.

“To strike the port so soon after the deal was made, even if no grain facilities were touched” was “a bit strange,” says Mr. Lukyanov. “It’s either a brutal message that, deal or no deal, the war will continue as usual or, perhaps, just chaotic decision-making. Either way,” he adds, “it probably won’t derail the agreement. Everyone wants it to work.”

Diplomatic seed

Even so, few in Russia seem to think the grain deal suddenly portends bright days ahead for a broader diplomatic push to end the war. As many see it, the Kremlin still has key military objectives, such as completing the conquest of the Donbas region, before returning to negotiations.

Still, some say the grain deal may have planted a seed that could grow into something larger.

This deal “is just a small, incremental technical agreement [but] if it works, it will demonstrate that Russia and Ukraine can find ways to take necessary steps,” says Mr. Kortunov.

NYU’s Professor Sidhu notes that the grain deal is the second instance of U.N. involvement in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, the first being talks that led to the release of civilians and fighters trapped at Mariupol’s devastated Azovstal steel works.

And he says the U.N. is likely to be part of any future negotiations between two parties that have no level of trust between them.

“Trust is still very much absent, so if anything is going to work it will require involvement of more than just the two, and it’s going to follow the old adage, ‘Mistrust, and verify,’” he says. “So verification is going to be key to this agreement, but eventually the verification process may lead the way to something larger.”

By Dmitri Simes, The National Interest, 7/25/22

In his opening remarks at the Fourth Ukraine Defense Contact Group on July 20, U.S. secretary of defense Lloyd Austin touted Kyiv’s military accomplishments and issued a warning to Moscow. “Russia thinks that it can outlast Ukraine—and outlast us,” he stated. “But that’s just the latest in Russia’s string of miscalculations.” Russia’s miscalculations in this conflict—underestimating both the strength of Ukrainian resistance and the unity of the West—are indeed serious and real, but such blunders are not unusual in the early stages of wars, including wars where, in the end, the erring side proved victorious. The Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939-40 is a prime example. Russia’s early miscalculations are therefore a poor guide in predicting the outcome of its burgeoning confrontation with the West, especially if we fail to take stock of America’s no less serious miscalculations in dealing with post-Soviet Russia.

Five key examples come to mind.

The first is the West’s staunch dismissal of Moscow’s numerous and increasingly dramatic warnings that NATO expansion toward its borders would be viewed as an existential threat to Russian security and encounter the strongest possible resistance. Under several different U.S. administrations starting with President Bill Clinton, America and its allies took the position that, since the West had no intention of attacking Russia, Moscow’s concerns could be safely ignored. As George F. Kennan and other American critics of NATO expansion anticipated at the time, however, Moscow adopted an increasingly determined stand against expansion, culminating in the deployment of force against Ukraine. Rather than acknowledge this development as evidence of Western mistakes, the West’s foreign policy elites instead now portray Moscow’s (in their view) unreasonable position as proof of Russia’s inherently aggressive nature. The problem with this view is that it contradicts what these policymakers told the Western publics in the 1990s, when decisions regarding NATO expansion were first made, that Russia was in essence a friendly but irrelevant geopolitical power. Since then, they have elevated their search for a new post-Cold War mission for NATO—and, tacitly, a new enemy—above the broader imperative of integrating the new Russia into the global order and, in the process, establishing a stable and secure Europe.

If the initial miscalculation was strategic and even moral in nature, the second was primarily tactical—but no less important in contributing to Moscow’s decision to invade Ukraine in February. In the absence of reliable information on Vladimir Putin’s thinking, the Biden administration opted to persuade itself that Moscow had either already decided to use force or, on the contrary, bluffed to secure concessions on NATO expansion. Considering that the numbers and disposition of Russian forces were neither adequate for a full-scale invasion nor sufficiently focused for a narrower offensive in the Donbass, one might think there was a good possibility of Russia engaging in diplomacy, hoping to obtain results without war but prepared to go on the offensive if talks failed. Yet such logic concerning the ordinary conduct of major powers proved alien to the Biden administration, which attributed sinister motives to Russian behavior: either Moscow’s attempt at diplomacy was a cover for a predetermined attack, or just cheap blackmail. In the administration’s defense, Russian requests came in the form of rather categorical demands, including a guarantee from NATO barring Ukrainian membership in perpetuity. Such demands are not unusual, however, for an opening bargaining position. Washington had every opportunity to test Moscow’s flexibility in proposing negotiations, starting with the obvious point of agreement, namely, that NATO would not invite Ukraine to join its ranks anytime soon. Instead, President Joe Biden chose to call Putin’s bluff—with predictable results. Does anyone really believe at this point that had the administration proposed serious negotiations on Russia’s Ukraine concerns rather than contemptuously dismissed them, Moscow would still have ordered an attack? The Biden administration provided an additional incentive for Moscow to attack, moreover, by stating in advance that under no circumstances would the U.S. use force to defend Ukraine. Greater tactical ineptitude is difficult to imagine.

The third miscalculation involved overestimating the degree to which the United States could count on international support in a protracted confrontation with Russia. Make no mistake: Biden and his advisors have done a remarkable job mobilizing the collective West against Moscow. The level of Western unity and will to act has not only been greater than anything the Russian government anticipated, but actually more than most in the West themselves expected. The problem is this: the United States, Europe, and their Pacific allies no longer command unchallenged global dominance—economically, politically, or even militarily. Considering how much is now at stake for Putin, forcing his retreat from Ukraine will require a determined effort by more than just the collective West. But such determination has not been apparent. Out of economic self-interest, governments from Riyadh to New Delhi to Beijing have proven reluctant to approve sanctions against the Russian energy sector that would deprive them of cheap and reliable supplies. While not supporters of Moscow’s actions, these governments do not believe that the Russian invasion represents a threat to them, or that it is so exceptional as to require that any responsible government act against it. Now that Washington’s efforts at persuasion have proved insufficient, the Biden administration is resorting to threatening severe consequences against anyone who refused to cooperate with U.S. sanctions—including China, another nuclear great power, or such American adversaries as Iran, already under severe U.S.-imposed sanctions. These efforts sent a clear message–nations outside the West were to follow the dictates of American might, rather than right. Many of these nations appreciate that most Western governments are more democratic than anywhere else. But these same nations—particularly those that have colonial or, in the case of China, neocolonial experience—have another notion of democracy, namely, democracy in international affairs where sovereign states are allowed to select their own form of government and define their own destiny. This concept is what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the yearning for dignity. It is in this dignity department that, for quite a few developing nations, Vladimir Putin, with his emphasis on working with existing governments (their imperfections notwithstanding), seems to offer more than Joe Biden. It is one major reason that efforts to isolate Russia globally were, from the outset, conceptually unsound.

Fourth, with the isolation of Russia proving less absolute than Washington had hoped, the United States has had to rely primarily on Western sanctions and Ukrainian successes on the battlefield. On the economic front, there was no clear plan on how sanctions could alter Russian conduct in a reasonable timeframe, before Western unity began to fray and there was less and less Ukrainian territory to defend. The Biden administration has approached the situation in a manner reminiscent of the Johnson administration’s escalation in Vietnam: introducing sanctions stage by stage, often less because they are expected to change Russian behavior, and more because there is simply a need to do something that will demonstrate the administration’s resolve both at home and abroad. Five months after the start of the conflict, it is fair to say that while sanctions have created clear inconveniences for the Putin government and economic damage in the long term, life in Russia remains remarkably normal. The ruble has not only stabilized but strengthened, inflation is increasingly being brought under control, and there are no visible interruptions in the supply chain. Traveling both to Moscow and the provinces suggests that many Russians feel their lives are essentially normal, without any painful interruptions. These developments explain the Biden administration’s increasing talk of a protracted conflict, which would allow time both for sanctions to inflict damage and for the United States and its allies to continue their unprecedented level of military assistance, training, and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The question of where these efforts will ultimately lead remains unanswered, and there is scant evidence they will prod Russian conduct in a desirable direction. At this point, the optimism expressed by Secretary Austin and others in the Biden administration is more an article of faith than anything else.

The United States and its allies can shift the military dynamics in Ukraine’s favor—from delivering more American HIMARS systems and other high-capacity weapons to Kyiv to providing more training to the Ukrainian military. The problem is that Russia enjoys multiple options in deciding how to respond, and, indeed, can escalate rather than retreat. The most obvious option is acquiring weapons similar to the HIMARS that might be available from China and North Korea. The Chinese may be reluctant to go that far, but North Korea—which recently recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” and is under severe sanctions itself—may be willing to oblige. Russia may also decide that avoiding general mobilization is no longer feasible, a move that would address its current manpower shortage. And whether the West likes it or not, there finally remains the option of using tactical nuclear weapons—a recourse that NATO itself once considered viable in confronting Soviet conventional superiority in Europe.

Last but not least, the collective steps taken against Russia thus far have had unintended consequences. From an American perspective, the most damaging of these is the growing impression among the majority of Russians that the West has launched an undeclared war against them. Regardless of who is responsible for the war, which power has international law on its side, or who presents a more reliable account of the situation on the battlefield, what is most important for a number of Russians is the growing conviction that Mother Russia now faces a moment of truth, confronted with a powerful assault by its enemies who make no real distinction between damaging the Russian government and punishing the Russian people. This development has become glaringly apparent in a variety of public opinion polls (including those conducted by opposition-minded groups) and in my numerous conversations in Moscow, including with figures who dislike Putin and only reluctantly acknowledge the emerging consensus in Russia.

This consensus—deeply rooted in Russian history and carefully nurtured through official propaganda—carries implications for Ukraine’s well-advertised counteroffensive and Russia’s likely response. New, modern American and European long-range missile and artillery systems have demonstrated their effectiveness in combat, but as the Ukrainians themselves acknowledge, the country needs many hundreds more of them (rather than a few dozen as today) to have any decisive impact on the outcome of the war. But there is more. With full U.S. support, the Ukrainian government now suggests using these powerful new weapons not only to rebuff the Russian offensive—retaking territories in the Donbass and southern Ukraine occupied after Russia’s invasion on February 24—but to reclaim Crimea from Russia. Such an effort would likely include using newly provided, high-powered, long-range American weapons to destroy the Crimean Bridge and, as is already occurring, hamper Russia’s ability to channel water from the Dnieper River to Crimea, a crucial supply blocked by Ukraine in 2014 and restored this year thanks to Russia’s current offensive. It would be a mistake to assume that, because Russia took Crimea only in 2014, both the Russian government and the Russian people alike would not consider an attack on it—made possible by U.S. and Western assistance—as anything other than an attack on Russia itself. With such patriotic sentiments in mind, Moscow’s attitude to such an attack would, in all likelihood, preclude a negotiated settlement, which many Russians would view as capitulation. Instead, it would respond with the huge remaining resources of the Russian Federation, which, to maintain domestic support, still treats the war as a limited “special operation” rather than an all-out “patriotic war.”

The idea shared throughout the Biden administration that we should be prepared to accept a protracted, Korean-style conflict—one that could last for years if not decades—while attempting to isolate and weaken Russia amounts to a dangerous gamble. The Korean Peninsula has a clearly defined, relatively narrow dividing line that separates the two antagonists. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, the dividing line would stretch thousands of miles. There would also be a number of Central and East European states—particularly Poland and the Baltic states—with their own strong grievances against Russia. To suggest that this explosive mix can be safely managed indefinitely seems overly optimistic. A more profitable course would be to pursue a negotiated settlement, one not necessarily attainable right away, but certainly in a matter of months rather than years.

The United States and its allies have apparently concluded that no outside party should instruct the Ukrainian government on the positions to take at the negotiating table, particularly over which territory, if any, to surrender. At the same time, it would be a dereliction of U.S. sovereignty to allow a foreign government a de facto level of control over U.S. support in a confrontation with another nuclear power, hoping against hope that if push comes to shove, America will treat Ukraine as a NATO ally entitled to automatic U.S. military support. While National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has emphasized that America has sympathy for the Ukrainian desire to have more weapons and to be able to conduct more effective military operations, the ultimate decision over what America provides—and for what purposes—must be made in Washington, not Kiev.