Ukraine’s Western allies urged Russia on Friday to allow Kyiv to ship grain to the world as the four-month war threatened to bring starvation to countries far from the battlefields. In a sign that the Kremlin is in no mood for compromise, President Vladimir Putin said the continued use of sanctions against Russia risked causing “disastrous” rises in energy prices, while his top diplomat clashed with his Western counterparts at a meeting of the G20. Meanwhile, Moscow’s envoy in London offered little prospect of a withdrawal from parts of Ukraine under Moscow’s control. Ambassador Andrey Kelin said Russian troops will defeat Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region and are unlikely to withdraw by land on the southern coast. Sooner or later, he told Reuters, Ukraine will have to decide whether to make a peace deal with Russia or “continue to go down this hill” toward destruction. On the Donbas frontline, Ukrainian officials reported Russian shelling of towns and villages ahead of an expected push for more territory, while President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff urged the West to send more heavy weapons to counter what he called Russia’s “tactics scorched earth”. “With sufficient number of shells, SPGs and HIMARS (missile launchers), our soldiers are able to stop and drive the invaders from our land,” Andriy Yermak wrote on Twitter. At the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, some of the staunchest critics of the invasion that began on February 24 confronted their Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. High on their list of concerns were moving grain shipments from Ukraine through ports blocked by Russia’s presence in the Black Sea and naval mines. Ukraine is a leading exporter and aid agencies have warned that many developing countries face catastrophic food shortages if supplies do not arrive. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged Moscow to release Ukrainian grain to the world, a Western official said. “He addressed Russia directly, saying: ‘To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. His wheat is not your wheat. Why are you blocking the ports? You should leave the wheat out,” the official said. Earlier, Lavrov had rebuked the West, saying that instead of focusing on how to tackle global economic problems at the meeting, the ministers had “frantically criticized” Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in a mock speech at the meeting, said the international community should not allow Russia to blackmail the world. The meeting’s host, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, said the effects of the war would hit poor countries hardest and that getting Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizer back into supply chains was critical. “It is our responsibility to … settle our differences at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield,” Retno said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a remote speech to Slovenia’s parliament, said food shortages would lead to increased migration to Europe, which he saw as part of a Russian plan to destabilize the continent. On Thursday, Putin indicated that current prospects for a solution to the conflict were dim, saying that Russia’s campaign in Ukraine had only just begun. Ambassador Kelin’s remarks, in an interview at his London residence, offered a glimpse of Russia’s potential end game — a forced partition that would leave its former Soviet neighbor with more than a fifth of its post-Soviet territory. “We will liberate all of Donbas,” said Kelin. “Of course it is difficult to predict the withdrawal of our forces from the southern part of Ukraine because we already have experience that after the withdrawal the challenges begin.” An escalation of the war is also possible, he added. Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II has killed thousands, displaced millions and flattened Ukrainian cities. Russia calls it a “special military operation” aimed at degrading Ukraine’s military and rooting out people it considers dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is engaging in an unprovoked land grab. Russian forces have seized a large swath of territory on the southern side of Ukraine and are waging a war of attrition in the Donbass, the eastern industrial heartland made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Luhansk’s governor said Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling residential areas on Friday. “It doesn’t even stop them from the fact that civilians remain there, dying in houses and yards. They hit houses, every building that seems to them a possible fortification,” Governor Serhiy Gaidai said. The situation was similar in the settlements in Donetsk. Moscow said on Sunday it had “liberated” Luhansk and now plans to seize parts of the Donetsk region it does not already control. Reuters could not independently verify accounts on the battlefield. In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Zelensky said he visited troops along the Dnipropetrovsk front line in central Ukraine. “In their eyes (there is) confidence in our victory,” he said.
