![Wheat prices rise in US after Russia pulls out of Ukraine grain deal](https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/wheat_ukraine_091522_AP_Efrem-Lukatsky.jpg?w=900)
The price of wheat continues to rise in the
United States and elsewhere after
Russia pulled out of a United Nations-negotiated deal to export grain from
Ukraine Monday. Wheat commodity futures have since Russia announced it would , which allowed Ukraine to export wheat from its southern ports via the Bosporus. Ukraine was one of the world’s largest wheat exporters before the
Russian invasion. Russia has also continued to and cities with missiles and drones, damaging the ability to export wheat if the deal were to resume. Those strikes have destroyed 60,000 tons of grain, Ukrainian President . “This attack proves that their target is not only Ukraine and not only the lives of our people. About a million tons of food is stored in the ports attacked today,” Zelensky argued. “This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa and Asia long ago.” The country, however, has claimed the attacks are “retribution” for a in Crimea Monday — which Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken predicted the rising prices Monday. “So the result of Russia’s action today — weaponizing food, using it as a tool, as a weapon in its war against Ukraine — will be to make food harder to come by in places that desperately need it, and have prices rise,” Blinken said. “We’re already seeing the market react to this as prices are going up.”