There is another battle being played out in Ukraine.
This is not directly military but economic and could have disastrous humanitarian consequences.
Along with Russia, Ukraine is a superpower in wheat production.
And its exports are essential to meet the needs of many countries, especially the poorest.
With the war, not only have wheat prices soared but production in 2022 in the country could be practically halved compared to the previous year.
In this already tense environment is added the attitude of Moscow.
The head of the American diplomacy Antony Blinken considered "credible" the information according to which Russia "steals" the exports of Ukrainian cereals, blocked because of the conflict to sell them for its own profit.
"All of this is deliberate," said the head of American diplomacy during a virtual conference on food insecurity.
According to him, Vladimir Putin not only prevents Ukraine from exporting its production because of the "naval blockade in the Black Sea" and could seek to profit by "stealing" the cereals to resell them on his own account.
At the same time, Moscow may seek to set up some kind of parallel system to continue doing business.
The New York Times reported that Washington warned 14 countries, mostly in Africa, in mid-May that Russian cargo ships were carrying “stolen Ukrainian grain.”
The Ukrainian ambassador in Ankara had accused Russia on Friday of "stealing" and exporting Ukrainian cereals, in particular to Turkey.
The UN fears "a hurricane of famines"
Before this war, Moscow and Ukraine accounted for about a third of world exports.
There, according to observers, Moscow would seek to set up a kind of "blackmail" and organize a shortage to partly obtain a lifting of international sanctions.
And the situation is already explosive.
Prices of cereals and oils have already exceeded the prices of 2008 and 2011 which were partly at the origin of the "hunger riots" and the Arab Spring.
The UN fears "a hurricane of famines" mainly in African countries which imported more than half of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated that 20 to 25 million tonnes of grain were currently stuck in Ukraine due to the war, a volume that could triple by autumn.
"We need maritime corridors and we are discussing this with Turkey and the United Kingdom" as well as with the UN, he said.
Ukraine has considered exporting cereals by train via the Baltic countries or Poland, but that will not be enough.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured last week that there were "no problems exporting grain from Ukraine" referring to ways to export from Ukrainian ports, others under control Russian or via Central and Eastern Europe.
“Putin cannot be trusted,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba wrote on Twitter on Monday, recalling that Moscow had promised not to attack the port of Odessa, which was one of the main loading points. grain for export.