Russia’s Disinformation Cannot Hide Responsibility for the Global Food Crisis, US Says

The US Gov­ern­ment has issued a state­ment denounc­ing Rus­si­a’s dis­in­for­ma­tion regard­ing the caus­es of the cur­rent glob­al food cri­sis. Accord­ing to a US Depart­ment of State: press release:

June 22, 2022 The dev­as­tat­ing effects of Russia’s aggres­sion have dis­rupt­ed Ukraine’s econ­o­my , which in turn has exac­er­bat­ed glob­al food inse­cu­ri­ty. Ukraine has long been the “bread­bas­ket of Europe, ” feed­ing  mil­lions of peo­ple across the globe. It is a top grain sup­pli­er to dozens of African and Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries. Now, after Russia’s Feb­ru­ary 24 all out inva­sion, Ukraine has turned “from a bread­bas­ket to a bread­line” while the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment uses dis­in­for­ma­tion to mis­lead the world about the cause of this cri­sis.  Food inse­cu­ri­ty has risen because of Putin’s war of choice. It was not caused, as the Krem­lin claims, by sanc­tions  that the Unit­ed States and many oth­er coun­tries have imposed in response to Russia’s hor­rif­ic aggres­sion against Ukraine. Food inse­cu­ri­ty was ris­ing before the inva­sion, and Putin’s war exac­er­bat­ed that trend. Rus­sia mined  Ukrain­ian grain fields, attacked  mer­chant ship­ping on the Black Sea, and blocked  Ukraini­ans from export­ing their own grain. Rus­sia is also plun­der­ing Ukrain­ian grain for its own prof­it, pil­fer­ing  grain from Ukrain­ian ware­hous­es accord­ing to cred­i­ble reports. All these actions have wors­ened food inse­cu­ri­ty around the world.

Read the rest here.

The state­ment also says that Rus­sia has launched a “mas­sive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign” to deflect atten­tion from Rus­si­a’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for wors­en­ing glob­al food inse­cu­ri­ty by blam­ing sanc­tions, “the West,” and Ukraine. The cam­paign focus­es on the cri­sis’s most heav­i­ly impact­ed regions – the Mid­dle East and Africa – and the false nar­ra­tives are ampli­fied by Krem­lin-con­trolled state out­lets such as RT Ara­bic and RT en Fran­cais, as well as Chi­nese state-affil­i­at­ed state media.

In April, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report report­ed that Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions are suc­ceed­ing out­side West­ern infor­ma­tion spaces where antipa­thy for the West is deep and sym­pa­thy for Rus­sia real. We have also exten­sive­ly report­ed on Chi­na’s ampli­fi­ca­tion of Russ­ian disinformation.