Secretary of State Blinken used the occasion of the 9,036th meeting of the United Nations Security Council, dedicated to an “open debate on Conflict and Food Security,” to launch a steady diet of accusations against President Putin’s regime. 

The secretary leveled the verdict that “the decision to wage war is the Kremlin’s, and the Kremlin’s alone,” and decried Russia for “violating the rules based international order.” He expressed hope that “the past not be prologue” when it comes to the horrors of Eastern Europe’s bloodlands.   

Wielding a small wooden gavel for tradition’s sake, Mr. Blinken referenced the death of Mr. Putin’s infant brother during the siege of Leningrad as well as the specter of the atrocity of the Holodomor — a Soviet-forced famine that killed millions in Ukraine — to castigate Russia for its role in stilling one of the world’s major breadbaskets.

Ukraine grows enough food to feed 400 million people annually, and 30 percent of the world’s wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine. One of the speakers before Mr. Blinken asserted that the global food situation is “not cyclical, but seismic.”  

Placed next to the secretary-general of the United Nations and in front of a mural painted by Norwegian artist Per Krohg that centers on a rising phoenix, Mr. Blinken asserted that “if Russia stops fighting, the war would be over. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no more Ukraine.”

Mr. Blinken invoked a tableau of Ukrainian farmers who “wear bulletproof vests and helmets as they harvest,” dodging landmines to feed their country and the world in the face of “food supplies held hostage by the Russian military.” 

Mr. Blinken also speculated that “Russia seems to believe that using food as a weapon will achieve what invasion has not: breaking the spirit of Ukraine.” He broadcast to the room full of ministers and diplomats that “the decision to weaponize food is Moscow’s, and Moscow’s alone.”     

In a pointed gesture, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, entered the room and took his seat only after Mr. Blinken concluded his remarks.

Mr. Nebenzia, who spoke after Mr. Blinken departed, blamed “extreme weather events and economic turmoil” rather than what he called the “special military operation” for food shortages, and suggested that food exports from Ukraine are being traded for European weapons.  

While briefly blaming climate change and other factors for this dire state of affairs, Mr. Blinken devoted the majority of his remarks to a full-throated diplomatic dressing down of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, criticizing the Kremlin for “violating the rules based international order.”

Mr. Blinken cited the admission by the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and onetime president, Dmitriy Medvedev, that “food is Russia’s quiet weapon.” Rebuffing Russian claims that American-led sanctions are to blame for “adding 60 million people to the rolls of the hungry,” Mr. Blinken stated “sanctions aren’t blocking Black Sea ports. Russia is.” 

The secretary argued for the necessity of “calling out the Kremlin for atrocities” on the same day that the country he represents as top diplomat earmarked another $40 billion for Ukraine in a bill that cleared the Senate and is on its way to President Biden’s desk. 

During his time at Turtle Bay, Mr. Blinken announced $215 million in “new emergency food assistance” for war-ravaged Ukraine, with “much more” aid promised in the months ahead.