Russian Strikes On Ukraine's Grain Infrastructure ‘Harm The Whole World’, State Dept Says

Washington D.C./03.08.23/Turan:    The United States said on Wednesday that Russia's increasing strikes on Ukraine's grain infrastructure "are not just targeting people inside Ukraine, but in fact the whole world," TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"[W]hen they target grain infrastructure, when they target shipping infrastructure, when they destroy grain, as they have in the past few weeks, they aren’t just harming Ukraine. They’re harming all the countries around the world, including, most particularly, developing countries who depend on those exports for survival," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told Wednesday's press briefing when responding to TURAN's questions.

The spokesperson went on to elaborate:  "We saw President Putin last week, in what was a clear propaganda move, announce that he would send, I don’t know, 25 to 50,000 tons of grain to African countries.  Well, just since the end of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, strikes carried out by Russia have destroyed 180,000 tons of grain inside Ukraine, including... 40,000 tons of grain just in the past 24 hours."

Miller also spoke about this weekend's Saudi Arabia-organized Ukraine peace talks, where Russia will not be present. Washington is not looking at the meeting as generating any concrete deliverables at the end of them.

"The point of these talks is to continue the conversation with countries around the world about how we obtain a just and lasting peace at the end of this war. So officials from the U.S will be traveling to attend these talks, including officials from the State Department," Miller said.

The spokesperson went on to add, "... From our perspective, it is a chance for a number of countries around the world who can attend these talks to hear directly from the Ukrainian Government about the horrors their country has suffered at the hands of Russian aggression, and how that aggression should not be rewarded at the end of this war."

He concluded:   "Obviously, we hope that every country in the world would support Ukraine’s position and every country in the world would take the position that we do, that Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty ought to be respected. So whenever we have conversations with other countries, we are encouraging them to adopt that point of view and we will be encouraging them to adopt that point of view in these talks. But we do look at this as part of a process, certainly not the end of any process."

Alex Raufoglu