MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. The risk of starvation noted by Western countries is caused by their own sanctions policy and selfish acts in dealing with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and not by Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

On her Telegram channel on Tuesday, the diplomat noted that the sphere of agriculture and agroindustry has been encountering difficulties at least for the past several years and this has several causes, both the coronavirus pandemic which disrupted logistics chains leading to growing prices, and the forced switch of some Western countries to green energy which affected prices for fertilizers.

That said, the diplomat noted that at the peak of the crisis caused by the pandemic, the US and European countries diverted the flows of goods and food products away from other countries. "The US and Europe were buying more and more products which on the whole they didn’t need, leaving African and Asian countries with nothing. The situation was aggravated by a low level of food supplies, unfavorable weather conditions and generally insufficient investments into this sphere," the spokeswoman wrote.

She emphasized that all of this was exacerbated by the West’s unilateral sanctions against Moscow. "Taking into account Russia’s role in the trade of agroindustry products this could not but influence food supply to our partners. Realizing the role of the Russian Federation on the global agricultural market, completely understanding what a complex situation had shaped in the sphere of food security in general, the West still introduced sanctions in that sphere which impacted the agricultural sector thereby aggravating the already heated situation," the diplomat stated.

That said, she noted that despite sanctions pressure Moscow continues to fulfill its contractual obligations as a supplier of agricultural products, fertilizers, energy products and other critically important goods. "For many years, we were accused of creating threats to energy security. That is, if something happens, Russia will turn off gas. That ‘something’ did happen but Russia supplies gas without fail. It is those who were scaremongering the world with Russia’s energy kill switch, Washington, who are forcing to reject it. So who created the threat to energy security? The same thing is happening with food [security]," the spokeswoman concluded.