Sanctioned Russian fertilizer tycoon warns food and energy sanctions are ‘economic weapons of mass destruction’
The sanctions imposed on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer producers amount to weapons of mass destruction in the scale of the damage they are likely to cause over the next few years, the founder of chemical giant EuroChem has argued.
“EU sanctions mean suffering, starvation and migration flows for several hundred million people,” Andrey Melnichenko said Thursday in an interview with Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche.
“Sanctions targeting food and energy are economic weapons of mass destruction. They are the ones who hit the innocent the hardest. I have no doubt that billions of people will feel its effects,” he warned.
Sufferers will want to hold those responsible accountable, and the EU will not be able to dismiss their guilt, the businessman added. It is not Russia or the United States, but EU members such as Lithuania and Estonia, as well as European leaders Germany, France and Italy, who have chosen to disrupt the functioning of his chemical empire with sanctions, he explained.
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EuroChem, a leading fertilizer producer, is headquartered in Switzerland, where Melnichenko also lives with his family. The EU and Switzerland have targeted the company and its owner with sanctions aimed at harming the Russian economy in retaliation for Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.
Melnichenko argued that he had personally been unfairly punished for being a wealthy Russian, dismissing claims that he had any influence over the Russian government. He warned of the catastrophic consequences that « carpet-bombing » of the Russian economy will cause in a few years.
He estimated that EuroChem products have helped feed nearly 274 million people. With its fertilizers not produced and sold due to the sanctions, the effect would be much worse than what is happening now with Ukraine’s reduced grain exports, he said.
“The G7 countries, with their billion citizens, see themselves as the moral leaders of the world. But they took precedence over the interests of the other seven billion people, » he said.
Russia and its ally Belarus, another target of Western sanctions, account for 17% of the world’s fertilizer supply, the tycoon said. If this offer were to disappear from the market, the world « will lose food for almost 750 million people after just a few harvests », he warned. Exports from these two countries have already fallen by 30-40% in the standoff with the West, and it is the most vulnerable people who are paying the price, Melnichenko added.
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« We don’t know if Third World people are already dying, or if they are ‘just’ starving and emigrating », he said. With social tensions soaring over hunger and fuel shortages, there will be a wave of violence, he predicted. “Maybe jihad will raise its black flag again. These are not wild theories, but facts.
Russia sent troops to Ukraine on February 24, citing kyiv’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, intended to give the Donetsk and Luhansk regions special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that kyiv’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to save time and « to create powerful armed forces. »
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbas republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. kyiv insists the Russian offensive was unprovoked.
