EU neighbors shun Kyiv’s plea to free trapped grain

BRUSSELS — Domestic farmers’ worries are trumping EU solidarity with Kyiv as the Black Sea blockade threatens to fuel a global food crisis and stunt Ukraine’s next harvest.

Ukraine needs help getting millions of tons of grain exports out of the country, as attacks on ports and ships continue into a third month.

Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi came to Brussels this week to make a direct appeal to his EU counterparts. Ukraine needs to be able to move more farm products through Europe, as well as €1.1 billion to cover higher shipping costs. Without help, cash-strapped farmers won’t be able to start planting for next season, compounding the problem.

“It’s very, very critical,” Vysotskyi told POLITICO during his visit.

The answer: Sorry, but no. Two of the countries with the most vital infrastructure for boosting shipping and storage capacity, Poland and Romania, said there is nothing more they can or will do to help.

“The interest for our own farmers remains a priority,” Barna Tánczos, Romania’s agriculture minister, told POLITICO. Excess Ukrainian grain, combined with low water levels on the Danube, is already overloading his country’s ports, preventing Romanian farmers from selling their own goods.

The rebuff illustrates a persistent gap between the EU’s ambitions to support Ukraine and domestic political realities. As one of the world’s breadbaskets, Ukraine poses a real threat to the livelihoods of European farmers, a powerful constituency in many member countries. Even before the latest eruption in Black Sea fighting, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary barred imports of Ukrainian grain.

Currently, less than half of the exports are able to get out through the European rail, road and river shipping routes, Vysotskyi said. Up to 35 million tons could end up being stuck in Ukraine this year if the blockade persists.

Romania is trying to optimize its logistics, Tánczos stressed. Last month, Bucharest even signed a memorandum of understanding to ease border crossings with Kyiv and boost rail links.

But “everybody knows we cannot double the number of trains, we cannot double the roads, railways and port capacity,” Tánczos said. “It is what it is.”

In Poland, the infrastructure ministry “has no plans to introduce any changes aimed at increasing the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products,” spokesperson Anna Szumańska said in a statement.

Though help isn’t coming immediately, the EU isn’t ruling out a collective response. “We need … to address this,” Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen told reporters this week, citing concerns for global food security — though he made no commitments.

Some capitals are volunteering more support. As Ukraine eyes Dutch and German ports as new outlets, a German agriculture ministry spokesperson said Berlin “is making every effort in Europe to ensure that alternative export routes … are strengthened.”

Spiraling to next season

In an interview, Vysotskyi described harvested grain and oilseeds piling up without a buyer — leaving farmers without the cash they need to plant winter seeds now for next year’s harvest. “If the situation stays like this till spring, it could mean the decrease of even 35-40% of the planted area,” he said.

The pain will be felt beyond Europe. As Russia and Ukraine trade bombs in the Black Sea, more than 17 percent of the world’s traded grain could be affected by the drop in exports from both countries, according to a recent Council on Foreign Relations report. “The number of people driven into acute hunger by the current Black Sea crisis could exceed all recorded battlefield casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war,” the report warns.

Yet the pain for European farmers — struggling with drought, heatwaves and spiking prices for fuel and fertilizer — is real too.

Iulia Blagu, a Romanian cereal farmer, described looking out at unharvested fields, “at the mercy of God and the climate,” because the crops can’t be stored or transported.

“And then you have this entire transit of Ukrainian cereals coming towards our country,” she said. “I mean … how can we handle that?”

Ketrin Jochecová contributed to this report.