Vladimir Putin, like Stalin before him, is weaponizing food

For now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is exploring moving grain through Romanian ports. Some have floated the idea of a NATO naval convoy to escort the grain haulers. But leaders in the West worry that the war will then widen. This same concern regarding potentially widening the war has restrained some of Ukraine's allies from providing fighter jets that could escalate the conflict.

Pope Francis recently addressed a crowd in St.Peter's Square, saying, "Beleaguered Ukraine, where war is destroying everything, even grain." The pope went on to say, "the cry of millions of brothers and sisters who are suffering from hunger rises to heaven."

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council, "They [Russians] were exporting more grains [a benefit to Russian farmers] than ever before and at higher prices. Russia is simply using the Black Sea as blackmail. It's playing political games. It's holding humanity hostage." 

As the U.N. General Assembly meets in New York this week, the evil of purposely weaponizing hunger once again by Russia needs to be addressed. It must be put in front of the International Criminal Court, which has already indicted the Russian president, accusing him of kidnapping Ukrainian children, and is looking at a long list of other war crimes by Putin and his military. 

In 1976, I was elected to the U.S. Congress as a representative for Macomb and St. Clair Counties in Michigan. I was new to Washington, as was a newborn hunger organization called Bread for the World. Founded by the Rev. Art Simon, the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church on New York City's Lower East Side, its goal was to prevent hunger from occurring in the first place, rather than just reacting to it. Simon said, "It's better to put a fence at the top of a cliff than to have an ambulance at the bottom."

As a neophyte, I had the good sense to team up with a legislative pro: Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the former vice president of the United States who had returned to Congress as the senator from Minnesota. We both were interested in food and hunger issues. 

With the support of Bread for the World, we worked together to require a hunger impact statement on all countries receiving U.S. foreign aid, underscoring the need to consider the country's track record on the fundamental human right for food. It passed the House and in the conference between the House and Senate, Humphrey was at the table to make sure it stayed in the bill. It was then signed into law by our new peanut farmer president from Georgia — Jimmy Carter. 

The right to food is a basic human right recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, the number of undernourished people in the world keeps increasing. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization reports that in 2020, between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger. And beyond hunger, one and in three people did not have access to adequate food in 2020. Since then, climate, war, inequality, and COVID-19 reversed the downward trend over the past decade. From 2019-2022 the number of undernourished people grew by 150 million.

Putin's war is only going to increase that number, putting the most vulnerable worldwide on the brink of famine. Undernutrition is connected to nearly half the deaths worldwide of children under 5 years old, according to UNICEF. The organization Embrace Relief reports that 66 million children of primary school age attend classes hungry across the developed world, 23 million of whom live in Africa. 

How many emaciated children with skeletal bodies, bloated stomachs, and deadened eyes, are Putin and Russia prepared to sacrifice in their maddeningly immoral war? And how long is the rest of humanity prepared to let them get away with it?