Ukraine/ Belarus: international relations and food crisis, Jun 2022

Belarus will not be considered as a route out for Ukrainian grain

In early June, Alyaksandar Lukashenka, the Belarusian leader, said that he was ready to permit the transit of Ukrainian grain across Belarus to ports in northern Europe, so long as Belarus was also allowed use the same facilities to export its own goods.

Ukraine is one of the world’s leading suppliers of wheat and other food staples, so that Russia’s seizure or blockade of its key port cities has prevented the shipment of large quantities of Ukrainian grain to world markets through the Black Sea, the main traditional export route. Reports suggest that between 18m and 22m tonnes of grain may be held up in Ukrainian ports as a result. This has major implications for food prices and food security elsewhere in the world. Most pointedly, following several years of drought in some African countries, the war in Ukraine has raised the risk of starvation for up to 20m people, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an NGO. Meanwhile, agricultural products accounted for close to half of Ukraine’s export earnings last year, or about US$28bn.  

However, fresh economic and political sanctions were imposed by the West on Belarus for allowing the use of its territory as one of the sites from which Russia launched its multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine in late February. This, in turn, followed the increased reliance of the Belarusian leadership on Russia’s support in the wake of the violent crackdown by Belarusian security forces on popular mass protests in the wake of a flawed presidential election in Belarus in late 2020. Moreover, this contrasts with the earlier “hot” phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2014-15, when the Belarusian authorities acted as a mediator in peace talks, leading to the negotiation of the first and second Minsk peace agreements.

It is highly unlikely, therefore, that Mr Lukashenka’s proposal for transporting Ukrainian grain through Belarusian territory, in return for the lifting of some Western sanctions on Belarus, will bear fruit. This in itself highlights the severe deterioration in Belarusian relations with both Ukraine and the EU since 2020. Moreover, this situation will not have been helped by Russia’s launch in late June of a large number of missiles at Ukraine from Belarusian territory or airspace—according to Ukrainian reports, in an attempt to get the Belarusian military to join the fight on Russia’s side, which they have so far been reluctant to do. 

The impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on global food supplies and prices is likely to be grave, with the effects unfolding at both the humanitarian and political levels, since food shortages could well trigger social and political instability far beyond the borders of the two main protagonists. For Belarus, meanwhile, the Russian invasion of late February showed its sovereignty much more tightly circumscribed than before the 2020 crackdown, so that the fate of its leadership now appears closely tied with that of the team around the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.