Russia’s intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s granaries and other agricultural infrastructure reflect their increasing inability to make effective attacks on proper military targets, according to U.S. and European officials.
“It's trying to say that it can strangle Ukraine's economy, as a whole,” Ambassador James O’Brien, the State Department’s lead sanctions coordinator, told reporters Friday. “Now, why is Russia attacking these soft targets? It’s in part because it’s unable to compete with the air defense that Ukraine has developed with help from partners like the U.S. and other NATO and European allies and G-7 partners.
That analysis dovetailed with the latest assessment from Estonia, one of the only NATO allies to share a border with Russia. “It is unlikely that Russian forces will be able to make a decisive breakthrough in Ukrainian positions in the near future,” Estonian Defense Forces Col. Mart Vendla said Friday. “Therefore, they are trying to exhaust the Ukrainian economy and civilian environment with missile and drone attacks.
“The prohibitions on attacking or destroying agricultural infrastructure do not apply if such facilities are used for the sustenance of armed forces or in direct support of military action,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, the lead official at the Russian mission to the United Nations, told the council on Thursday.
“Last year’s invasion of Ukraine caused many millions of people to be pushed into food insecurity because of rising prices and lessened availability of food,” State Department special envoy Cary Fowler, Blinken’s point man for global food security, said during the briefing with O’Brien. “It’s a drop in the bucket in terms of need and it’s a drop in the bucket in comparison with what they have taken off of the market that would have gone to those countries if they had not invaded Ukraine.
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