If they can ship the food to Odessa (presumably by truck or train), it seems like they would be able to ship it to a port in a non-blockaded foreign country instead (e.g. Turkey, Greece, Italy, Poland).
Plus, you go to all the effort and expense of doing that, then Russia hits a few important bridges on the Ukraine side of your routes, and now you're back to nearly-zero capacity.
Most of the trains in Ukraine is electric-pulled. Russia has already struck most of the railway power transforming stations. Ukraine has very limited number of diesel trains. It can't use European ones because of different wheelbase. (correction thanks to the commenter below - gauge, not wheelbase)
Russia has already stolen about 500 000 tons of wheat from Ukraine and delivered it to Assad, its ally in Syria. Russia runs very intensive propaganda campaign representing European help to Ukraine wrt. wheat export as basically Europe stealing the wheat. Its propaganda also celebrates the food prices rising in the "collective West" countries as supposed result of the sanctions, and Russia will do anything to stimulate the rise of the prices in order to foment public push against the sanctions.
Well, no hunger for good people of Syria then
if you have different info - please share
yep, as long as you're "good" according to Russia&Assad. Russia is weaponizing the food the way it has weaponized natural gas and oil. In some sense that is a weapon of mass destruction posed to be used in the next few years with casualties going into millions or even tens of millions ballpark if one to look at various predictions of the food price rises and shortages in the next few years.
Looks like win-win to me
<skipping crap about food as a weapon>
Nothing indicates that. If anything, what we know about Russia and Assad allows to reasonably suspect that it is only pro-Assad regions will be fed while others will be subjected to the rising prices and shortages.
>Looks like win-win to me
That win for Russia, Assad and pro-Assad population comes at the cost of increased prices and shortages for the Middle East and Africa at least (the regions which directly imported from Ukraine), as well as rising prices across the world - all that being the direct result of the Russian war hitting availability of tens of million tons of Ukraine produced food. I.e. there were 2 alternatives - 1) tens of millions tons of Ukraine produced food would normally be available to the whole world vs. 2) Russia delivers only 500K tons to its Syrian allies. As we see Russia used military force to enforce the alternative 2).
><skipping crap about food as a weapon>
Food isn't the weapon. Using military force to intentionally create food unavailability is the weapon.
It seems like you intentionally missing the point that Russia is using its military force in Ukraine to :
1. limit the availability of the Ukraine produced food on the international market
2. put as much as possible of what is produced by Ukraine under Russian control
and thus to allow Russia to create food unavailability at will at the place and time of its choosing.
Btw, interesting parallel with Nazi Germany - it wanted to grab those fertile lands for itself and to clean them of Slavic people, and Russia similarly wants those lands for itself and to clean them of Ukrainians (and Russia has been actually succeeding at that more than Germany back then as Russia has already forced more than 12 million Ukrainians out of those lands).
https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=ca&commodity...
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/09/intercepted-podcast-afri...
Ok top of that, there is a gauge change when crossing over from Ukraine to the west and the infrastructure towards the west is hardly at the level required. For example, train crossings from Poland to Germany are not all electrified, so you need another change of engine.
Yet another example where Russia didn't think carefully enough before invading.
It is EU that is different with 1435mm.
There is no gauge difference between Russia and Ukraine.
In fact, even some (small) parts of Polish railways use Russian gauge - remnant of the times when Soviet raw materials were delivered in bulk to Polish metallurgic plants.
Just a quick point of clarification for anyone trying to look this up. The correct term is "gauge" (distance between the rails) instead of "wheelbase" (distance between front and rear wheels). Most European countries use tracks with a gauge of 1,435mm but Ukraine uses 1,520mm.
But also, a lot of the food has been destroyed, a lot of the equipment has been destroyed in the chain of producing and delivering the food, and a lot of the people that work in that chain have been killed, displaced, or have had more pressing tasks than working in agriculture. Those problems aren't likely to be solved immediately even if new export routes are opened.
If I were Ukraine, I would do all I could to exacerbate global food shortages.
If I were the United States, I might consider how massive aid packages interact with various incentives along these lines.
Supposedly the aid is help get around the sea blockade. Every cost is a negotiation.
If Russia is able to defeat Ukraine, end the war and stabilise the situation, they will be in a better position to convince countries to work around the sanctions they are facing, which would amount to an end-run around the dominanc e of the US dollar.
I suspect if everybody understood that's what we're really concerned with, support for Ukraine would drop precipitously.
Also, the Ruble is stronger than it's been in years, so all of this appears to be having the opposite effect - https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ruble-hits-7-year-high-gas...
But flooding Ukraine with cash and weapons, with zero oversight or public debate should concern people. It all seems a bit poorly managed, something that most intelligent people now agree is the overarching theme of the current administration. Dropping buckets of cash aid and weapons — 20 billion here, 40 billion there — will probably do more than intended. It usually does. We love regime changing the world, spreading American style peace and democracy, typically with an unwarranted optimism about the outcome. Let’s hope things go better this time.