Agricultural and energy costs are falling, but basic items remain stubbornly expensive for consumers. It is the most basic of staple food items: sliced white bread. In Britain, the average price of a loaf was 28 percent higher in April, at 1.39 pounds, or $1.72, than it was a year earlier. In Italy, the price […]
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Ukraine and Russia agreed Wednesday to a two-month extension of a wartime deal that allows Ukraine to ship its grain across the Black Sea, a rare example of cooperation between the two countries. The agreement was scheduled to expire on Thursday. While both sides expressed ongoing grievances over the issue of exports, reaching agreement appeared […]
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BRUSSELS — European Union ambassadors agreed on Friday to allow Ukraine’s grains into the bloc free of tariffs for another year, while granting more than $100 million in aid for farmers in neighboring E.U. countries where crop prices have collapsed with the flood of cheaper imports. Four of those countries — Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and […]
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After more than a year of surprisingly solid European unity in support of Ukraine, grains of discord are piling up in the barn of Robert Vieru, a Romanian farmer with 500 tons of wheat and 250 tons of sunflower seeds now sitting unsold because of cut-price Ukrainian competition. A glut of Ukrainian cereals and other […]
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In Britain, food prices were up 19 percent last month from the previous year. In Spain, farmers are worried that a lack of rainfall will irreversibly damage wheat and barley production. And in West and Central Africa, record numbers of people are facing potentially dire food shortages. Nonetheless, a handful of European nations including Poland […]
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Hungary has joined Poland in banning imports of grain and other foods from Ukraine that have hit their domestic agriculture industries hard, in a diplomatic setback for Kyiv that may also have repercussions for the future of the Black Sea grain deal, a key wartime agreement. Hungary’s agriculture minister said on Saturday that his country […]
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With the endpoint near on a crucial deal that allowed Ukrainian grain shipments through a Russian naval blockade, the United Nations said it was racing to bridge differences to extend the agreement, which has helped alleviate food shortages and limit price increases. Russia and Ukraine have been at odds over how long to extend the […]
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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his Russian counterpart on Thursday held the first private, face-to-face exchange between a U.S. cabinet member and a top Kremlin official since the invasion, and Mr. Blinken said he used the encounter to demand that Russia end its war on Ukraine. The unscheduled encounter with Sergey V. Lavrov, […]
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WASHINGTON — As the fight in Ukraine has dragged on for the past year, another battle has unfolded in parallel: a war of words between Russia and the West over who is more interested in ending the conflict peacefully. For now, analysts and Western officials say, serious peace talks are extremely difficult to envision. Both […]
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