“Food must never be used as a weapon of war.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas posted that on September 22, 2026, and the next day she took it to a United Nations side-event on global food security, where she called for a new Black Sea grain arrangement modeled on the 2022 deal.
Only collective diplomatic pressure can restore safe passage for civilian ships, Kallas argued. She said the international community should back efforts to secure navigation, shield port facilities and reopen a route that has been almost entirely shut since August.
What she wants beyond the 2022 model
The original Black Sea Grain Initiative was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey. It ran from July 2022 until Russia pulled out in July 2023, and in that time roughly 33 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain left the country.
Kallas wants more than shipping lanes. Her proposal covers explicit protection for grain terminals, warehouses and logistics hubs in the Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi port complex, which historically handled about 90 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural shipments.
The scale of the attacks
Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure recorded 35 strikes on ships in port, 22 attacks at sea and 67 hits on port infrastructure in July alone. All of 2025 saw 14 attacks on vessels. Since June, Russian forces have targeted at least 57 cargo ships in the Black Sea, including some carrying Ukrainian grain.
Seaborne grain exports fell by about 75 percent year on year in August. Ship calls at the Greater Odesa ports dropped from seven or eight a day to one. Shipowners and insurers concluded they could no longer assess or underwrite the risk on commercial terms.
The effects are global. A Tony Blair Institute report says Ukraine normally supplies 15 percent of the world’s maize exports, 10 percent of wheat, 15 to 20 percent of barley and about half of its sunflower oil, with around 90 percent of those goods moving through the Black Sea. The FAO Food Price Index hit its highest level since late 2022 in August. Wheat prices were up 15 percent on the year, and sugar rose nearly 12 percent in a month.
Pressure on both sides
The squeeze runs both ways. Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Novorossiysk and Sea of Azov ports have reportedly cut export capacity at Russia’s highest-volume terminals by about 70 percent. Russian wheat shipments in August came in at 1.5 to 3 million tonnes, against a usual 5 million. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the air war cut the two countries’ combined grain and agricultural exports by two-thirds in August.
Turkey, which co-brokered the first deal, has its own plan for safe passage and says it has sent proposals to both Moscow and Kyiv. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said at the end of August that responses had come back, though big differences remain. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged on September 22 that the Turkish initiative came up in recent talks between Presidents Erdogan and Putin. In August, Moscow rejected a similar Turkish idea as offering Kyiv only a “brief respite.” It has not publicly answered Kallas.
Bulgarian President Iliana Iotova told the UN General Assembly that Sofia is preparing an initiative to turn the Black Sea into a zone of free transport, energy, trade and digital corridors.
The EU has mobilized €2.1 billion for global food security in 2025 and has supported grain storage and farmers inside Ukraine. Its Solidarity Lanes, land and river routes opened after May 2022, have carried trade worth around €304 billion. Kallas and other European officials say those routes cannot match the volume and efficiency of the sea.
