Viktor Orban Warns of Global 'Famine' Due to Shortages of Ukrainian, Russian Grain
'There will be famine in many parts of the world'
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Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned of famine and new migration waves due to shortages of Ukrainian and Russian grain caused by the war and associated Russo-Western sanctions.
“The embargo against Russia will exclude Russian grain from the world market, the war will exclude Ukrainian grain, there will be famine in many parts of the world from which migrants have already arrived in Europe, and this pressure will increase,” warned the Hungarian prime minister, who recently matched Germany’s former leader, Angela Merkel, by winning a fourth consecutive term.
“I want Hungary to be able to protect itself, and so we need to strengthen our defences against migration pressure,” the national conservative said during a Kossuth Radio interview.
He emphasized elsewhere that Hungary, which has adopted a firm borders policy since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015-16, has still “accepted 600,000 refugees – almost 700,000 – from Ukraine, without any reservations” and provided “the greatest amount of humanitarian aid in [Hungarian] history,” despite what he described as the abuse of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority “because they are Hungarians” by Kyiv.
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As Brietbart reported:
The disruption of grain exports from Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe despite its recent history of communist-engineered mass starvation, could force many third world states already suffering precarious food security over the edge, with the head of the UN’s World Food Programme warning that “famine, destabilization, and mass migration” are inevitable if the West does not spend billions to shore up his organization.
“If you think we’ve got Hell on earth now, you just get ready,” said World Food Bank Executive Director David Beasley, a former Governor of South Carolina, in late March.
“If we neglect northern Africa, northern Africa’s coming to Europe. If we neglect the Middle East, [the] Middle East is coming to Europe,” he added.
Russia is accused of directly exacerbating the crisis, with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, claiming on social media that he “saw silos full of grain, wheat and corn ready for export” when he was in Ukraine, but that this “badly needed food is stranded because of the Russian war and blockade of Black sea ports.”
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Russia has also been accused of bombing Ukrainian grain silos, not only restricting supply but actually eliminating it.
While Michel, like Beasley at the UN, stressed the impact of grain shortages on “vulnerable countries,” European countries are also in the firing line, with livestock farmers in the EU relying heavily on Ukrainian and Russian products for feed.
Russia is also a major source of manure and key fertilizer ingredients, with Sweden, for example, warning that a fall in imports caused by sanctions and geopolitical tension could see its harvests cut in half this year.
Rising fuel costs as the West seeks to restrict Russian gas and oil — and as Russia seeks to weaponize the West’s dependence on its gas and oil — have also added to the strain, as have natural crises such as a lack of rainfall in east Germany, which farmers fear will lead to large-scale crop failures.
As Neon Nettle reported:
Regional director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, Germany-based Martin Frick, has said there are as many as four and a half million tons of grain just sitting at Ukrainian ports waiting to be exported.
Grain cannot be exported from Ukraine because the typical method of moving the huge bulk of the product, by bulk carrier ship from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, has been rendered impossible by the intensification of hostilities by Russia this year.
