THE SQUIZ
Next Wednesday marks 6 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Oleksiy Arestovych, a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, says the 2 sides have hit a “strategic deadlock”. “Russian forces have achieved only minimal advances, and in some cases, we have advanced since last month,” he said yesterday. To discuss what’s next, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Zelensky in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv overnight. Top of the agenda is finding a political solution to the war – that’s not on the cards because experts say there’s no sign that either party is seeking a deal. Until there’s a dramatic shift on the battlefield, they say that’s unlikely to change. But there are 2 other pressing matters to address: the threat to global food supplies and the risk of a disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

LET’S GO NUCLEAR FIRST…
Keep your cool, we’re getting there… Recent fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has raised fears of a catastrophe as the 2 sides accuse each other of behaving irresponsibly. Russia insists that it has no heavy weapons at the plant or nearby, but Ukraine is preparing for the worst by running disaster drills. The plant is under Russian control but is staffed by 10,000 Ukrainians, and while the United Nations’ request is for a demilitarised zone in the area, Russia has knocked that back and is not budging on leaving the site. The next move is a visit by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Russia has been accused of holding it up. It’s Europe’s largest nuclear plant, and it’s located in the middle of the continent, so a disaster there doesn’t bear thinking about…

GEEZ… AND WHAT’S THE GLOBAL FOOD ISSUE?
We’ve talked about prices going up here in Oz, and the war in Ukraine is feeding into that. But we’re not short of food… Since the war’s start, Ukraine’s grain and oilseeds exports are down significantly because Russia blockaded its ports. There are no sanctions on Russia’s food and agriculture trade, but it’s struggling to ship its record wheat harvest due to logistical and financial problems. The World Food Program says those issues are big factors in the number of “severely food insecure people” – 135 million before the pandemic – rising to an expected 323 million by the end of the year. That hits the hardest in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. At the end of July, 3 ports in southern Ukraine were unblocked under a deal brokered by the UN and Turkey, and there are hopes this will continue. Oh and Australia’s Nicola and Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest had a big hand in that breakthrough too…