Moscow: The claims peddled by the US State Department about the damage to the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex clearly play into the hands of those who benefit from rising food prices and disruptions in supplies, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
“US State Department spokesman Ned Price routinely shifts the blame for the worsening global food crisis onto Russia. In particular, references are being made to a report put out by the Washington-funded Conflict Observatory NGO on the damage that had allegedly been inflicted by our country on Ukrainian grain depots during the special military operation. A familiar story. There was an ‘observatory’ with regard to the situation in Syria.
“It was based not in Damascus or Aleppo, but in London (we covered this earlier) in a building that used to be a pizza place. Nominally, they created an entity that the British authorities, NATO, and Anglo-Saxons generously supplied with money and most importantly, fake facts. The same thing is now happening in the US. They are financing this entity, portraying it as civil society, and supplying it with materials. Later on, they will be citing these materials,” Zakharova said.
The report, which is financially backed by US official bodies, states that “at least” one in six food warehouses in Ukraine had been impacted since February, and about 8.4 million tonnes of grain were destroyed, damaged or “stolen”, which puts in jeopardy Ukraine’s ability to fulfil its obligations to the UN World Food Programme and deals a blow to the Istanbul deala which fact will impact the poorest countries.
“We know perfectly well that NATO countries can’t sleep or eat because all they do is think about the poorest countries out there. They are using these groundless allegations to put forward heinous statements accusing our country of war crimes,” said Zakharova.
The armed forces of the Russian Federation target only military infrastructure and enemy troops. This has been stated. It is a fact that no “conflict observatory” in the United States is in a position to refute, she said.
The goal of the United States is to head off any accusations of possible disruptions in shipments of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports that may come from the developing countries, as well as of the “strange geography” of the end recipients of grain, she said.
“We would also like to point out that the United States is the main sponsor and supplier of weapons to Kiev, which uses them to strike civilian targets such as shopping centres, shops, markets, and food warehouses. This includes agriculture processing plants, which, according to the West, make products the poorest countries needed so badly. When agricultural facilities are showered with shells fired from American weapons, the United States temporarily forgets about the poorest countries that need food,” she added.
(IANS)
