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Let the ex-Dutch minister care about his government’s responsibility
It may seem that Ukrainian grain is a major — if not the only — source of food in the world. But figures don’t lie.
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Trucks loaded with grain wait in a line near Izmail, in the Odessa region, on June 14, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (AFP/Oleksander Gimanov)
T
he former Dutch defense minister in his letter to the editor of The Jakarta Post of July 13, reacting to my article about the true reasons behind the global food crisis of July 2, imagines that the Netherlands invades Indonesia in 2023, “kills tens of thousands” of Indonesians, “tortures its citizens” etc.
Let me remind him that his country already did that in the past. And new facts about the Dutch atrocities in Indonesia were published recently. What is it? Hypocrisy? I can attribute this ill imagination only to his deep-rooted nostalgia about the Dutch's infamous colonial past.
My country was on the other side of history helping others in their struggle for independence, including Indonesia. We have never colonized other countries and we do not have a habit to live at the expense of others.
Indonesia is not Ukraine. It had not posed a threat to the Netherlands; it had not been flooded with arms to carry on genocide against its own people and it had not been transformed into the anti-Netherlands state by foreign intelligence services before the Dutch captured it with the only reason to pump out its resources.
Now on to the substance of the matter. Do you remember that I called on readers to understand the roots and drivers of the global food crisis without emotions and political prejudice? Although I carefully provided all the figures, the former Dutch defense minister did not heed my advice.
It is very regrettable that the former defense minister has little understanding of a military strategy. Why would Russia mine the Ukrainian ports? At the very beginning of the special military operation, the Ukrainian regime mined Odessa's port to prevent the possible landing of the Russian troops there. Ukraine itself should demine Odessa first. Russia is not blocking it. We even withdrew our troops from Snake Island as a gesture of goodwill. Just recently, Russia took part in the first round of the quadripartite negations involving the United Nations on Ukrainian grain in Istanbul. There are also at least five land routes to export Ukrainian grain.
These days, the West is pushing the Ukrainian grain agenda. Why? By doing that, they are trying to force countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, most of which did not support Western illegal sanctions against Russia, to change their stance. These days, Western governments are so worried about the starving people in those regions. But where were they before? According to the Food Agriculture Organization in 2021, the number of starving people in 53 countries reached 200 million.
It may seem that Ukrainian grain is a major — if not the only — source of food in the world. But figures don’t lie. Around 800 million tons of grain are produced in the world annually. Ukraine is ready to export 20 million tons, which is 2.5 percent. The share of grain in the world's food volume is 20 percent. This means that Ukraine produces only 0.5 percent of it.
On the other hand, Russia produces more than 120 million tons of grain and this number is growing from year to year. But we cannot freely export it.
The so-called “Holodomor” hunger of 1932-1933 in the Soviet Union (USSR) was a shared tragedy for all citizens: Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and other ethnic groups. All the attempts to portray it only as “the effort of the Soviet dictator Stalin to starve Ukrainians” have nothing to do with historical facts.
The real “Holodomor” in Ukraine may come after the West, with the assistance of the Zelensky regime, drags all grain stocks out of Ukraine. Do not be surprised: It goes in line with Washington’s concept of the proxy war until the last Ukrainian. The same fake news is a story of Russia “stealing Ukrainian grain”.
On the idea that the population of Ukraine “chose overwhelmingly for independence from Russia”, it may become a discovery for the former Dutch defense minister that at that time, there was the USSR not Russia, and during the referendum in 1991 that he referred to more than 70 percent of Ukrainians voted in favor of the preservation of the USSR.
So, let the former Dutch defense minister care about the responsibility of his own government for the global food crisis and keep his ignorance about Russia and Ukraine to himself.
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The writer is the Russian ambassador to ASEAN.
