Aid workers are racing to deliver emergency food supplies to Ukrainian cities at risk of “medieval tactics of besiegement”, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP) has said.
In a dramatic turnaround for a country long hailed as the “breadbasket of the world”, the UN’s emergency food agency is now trying to get stocks into warehouses in Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro before it is too late, said Jakob Kern.
“We are concentrating right now on stocking up the cities that are in danger of being encircled. That’s the rush against time for us,” said Kern, emergency coordinator for WFP. Lack of humanitarian access meant it was probably too late for the encircled port city of Mariupol and the north-eastern city of Sumy, he added, but the agency would try to make the most of any ceasefires, however brief, to get food in.
Kern, who worked for WFP in Syria for three years during the height of the war, said the situation unfolding in Ukraine, which has seen Russian forces try to surround cities while pummelling them from the air, was reminiscent of siege tactics used there.
“It’s the same system that we had in 2016 in Syria. It’s coming back again,” he said, adding: “You don’t expect it anywhere in the 21st century, these medieval tactics of besiegement, of starving people inside, let alone so close in Europe.”
The mission to stock up the warehouses had “started from zero”, Kern added, but was now advancing, with 7,000 tons of food already in the country, another 7,000 on the way, and deals done for an additional 55,000 tons.
Before the Russian invasion, rather than being a recipient of food aid, Ukraine had grown to become the WFP’s largest supplier of food commodities by volume, its bountiful harvests providing the agency with more than 880,000 tons of wheat and split peas in 2021.
Now, with fears of worsening hunger in areas under bombardment, such as Mariupol, the capital, Kyiv, and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, the WFP is suddenly faced with trying to get food into and around a country that used to feed the world.
It is no easy task: humanitarian convoys are threatened by fighting and indiscriminate attacks, the agency says, risks that add to the already formidable challenge of navigating a supply chain that has in many areas broken down.
“[Food] is in the wrong places and it’s difficult to move it because obviously truck drivers are reluctant to go to these cities,” said Kern. “They’re either afraid [of the violence] or they’re afraid of being conscripted into the army with all these checkpoints along the way.”
The Ukrainian government had indicated it would be willing to give drivers aged between 18 and 60 involved in delivering humanitarian supplies a letter exempting them from conscription, but it would take time for that to happen, he added.
WFP’s goal is to eventually support 3.1 million people in Ukraine with various types of aid, either in the form of bread, food rations or cash assistance in places, such as the western city of Lviv, where shops are still open and food is available.
A ration for a family of three for 30 days contains pasta, rice, canned meat, vegetable oil and salt. The agency has already contacted bakeries in Kyiv and Kharkhiv with a view to working together to maintain bread supplies.
Under heavy bombardment and almost totally encircled, many of those who remain in the capital – roughly half the pre-war population, according to officials – spend their nights in underground stations.
In Mariupol, from where an estimated 20,000 civilians managed to flee on Tuesday via a humanitarian corridor, hundreds of thousands remain in conditions described by the International Committee for the Red Cross as “apocalyptic”.
WFP is appealing for $590m (£450m) to fund its work on the Ukraine crisis. Meanwhile countries such as Yemen and Lebanon fear that the impact of the war on wheat and fuel prices will push more people into hunger.
On Wednesday, a donor conference in Geneva aimed at raising funds for Yemen ended with world leaders pledging little more than a quarter of the target amount.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he was “deeply disappointed”. “More people are in need this year in Yemen than in 2021. More lives will be lost. More children will starve … yet somehow, we will have less money to support them. World leaders must not allow this to happen.
“The people of Yemen need the same level of support and solidarity that we’ve seen for the people of Ukraine. Especially as the crisis in Europe will dramatically impact Yemenis’ access to food and fuel, making an already dire situation even worse. We need to step up now to avoid thousands more dying from hunger.”
