Missile strikes on ships and ports in the Black Sea have hammered Ukraine's economy and now threaten world food supplies, making a truce urgent, Thomas de Waal argues in Carnegie Europe's Strategic Europe blog.

The sea was "shipping's deadliest theatre" in July, more dangerous than the Strait of Hormuz, according to Lloyd's List, and 23 sailors were killed that month, de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, wrote in the commentary published on September 22.

"It has been a long, hot, and dangerous summer in the Black Sea, where long-range missiles have delivered destruction to ships as well as Russian and Ukrainian towns and cities. And the longer it goes on, the more global food security is in the line of fire, too," he wrote.

Russia and Ukraine together have accounted for about 30% of the world's wheat exports and 12% of its corn exports in recent years, almost all of it shipped cheaply through the Black Sea by bulk carrier. In August the air war cut the grain and agricultural exports of both countries by two-thirds, de Waal said, a collapse that has already pushed world food prices to a 2022 high and sent Russia's August wheat exports towards a decade low.

The missing grain puts several African countries at risk of famine, while world cereal prices, already driven up by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could rise higher still, he warned.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has offered a ceasefire at sea, Reuters reported on August 13, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far rejected the idea, and Moscow also turned down Turkey's plan for a shipping truce in August. London's marine insurers have since extended their "high risk" reporting area to the whole of the Black Sea.

"For Europeans, the conclusion must be that a new path to supporting Ukraine's economic resilience, now under heavy strain, lies in resetting Europe's relations with African and Middle Eastern countries - the same countries that both face the worst global food insecurity and can make the case to Putin that he must agree to a truce," he wrote.

Russia has been hit hard all summer by Ukrainian missiles in the Sea of Azov and in and around Novorossiysk, where all three grain terminals stopped loading after drone strikes. Yet Putin "evidently believes that Russia has greater strategic depth and a more compliant population and can endure this pain competition better than Ukraine," de Waal said.

"Russia's strategy is plain. It wants to fatally weaken Ukraine this fall and winter by decimating its port and energy infrastructure," he wrote, adding that the Kremlin also wants to sap Europe's will to fund Kyiv, especially in France and Poland, where far-right, Ukraine-sceptical parties may do well in elections next year.

Russia first tried to choke Odesa, Ukraine's economic lifeline, in 2022, then agreed to the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative after its Black Sea Fleet suffered heavy damage. When Moscow pulled out of the deal in 2023, Ukraine kept its maritime trade moving with help from Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, and both sides mostly observed a de facto moratorium on hitting commercial shipping and the grain trade.

That changed in late June, when Kyiv launched a 40-day campaign that massively widened its range of targets in Russia. The campaign scored major successes, de Waal wrote, but intensified Russian air strikes more or less shut down Odesa's ports just before an unusually rich grain harvest. Kyiv has told the International Maritime Organization that Russia attacked 52 civilian ships in July and the first half of August, and the port closures could cost Ukraine 5.3% of GDP by 2027.

Harvested Ukrainian grain is now leaving by truck or train at much greater expense, and the Danube could not take up the slack because water levels hit a historic low this summer. Russian attacks have destroyed up to 40% of Ukraine's storage facilities, according to an Odesa-based businessman cited by de Waal, leaving the country facing an 11mn-tonne storage shortfall this autumn, while alternative routes handle only about 40% of the volumes needed. The damage has already forced Kyiv to halve its 2026 growth forecast to 0.5%.

In the long run Odesa needs proper air defence, as does the rest of Ukraine, and farmers struggling to get this year's crop to market need sustained support to avoid knock-on damage to next year's harvest, de Waal argued. They also need a better source of fertiliser than Jordan and Morocco, currently two main suppliers whose products are expensive to buy and hazardous to transport.

Eventually that will mean a deal with Belarus, one of the world's three major potash producers, "but such a deal is probably politically impossible at the moment with a regime that is too close to Moscow," he wrote.

The crisis also leaves other conflict-wracked countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen vulnerable to famine. "The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was one blow; next year's severe El Niño will be another," de Waal wrote, as forecasters put the coming El Niño at record strength.

Reopening Odesa's ports would help, but European governments have made matters worse with aid budget cuts that have further hollowed out an international humanitarian system already weakened by the 2025 closure of the US Agency for International Development, he said. Russia, meanwhile, stokes suggestions of double standards - that Europeans care only about the suffering of white people - to weaken the international coalition behind Ukraine.

If Putin does commit to a ceasefire, Europe will not be the main actor. Neither Russia nor Ukraine wants to return to the complicated Black Sea Grain Initiative, and the UN Office for Project Services, the organisation's operational arm, stands ready to implement a truce together with Turkey, which has been pushing a new Black Sea grain deal.

"Putin will get to that ceasefire only when the leaders of countries such as Algeria, Egypt, and India pick up the phone to tell him that their food security is at risk," de Waal wrote, pointing to the high-level meetings at the UN General Assembly in New York as the venue for those conversations. "Europeans can do their part, but they need to reframe their own strategic thinking first."