March 14: A global food crisis looms unless the war in Ukraine is stopped because fertiliser prices are soaring so fast that many farmers can no longer afford soil nutrients, Reuters quoted Russia's coal and fertiliser king Andrei Melnichenko as saying on Monday.

According to the news agency, several of Russia's richest businessmen have publicly called for peace since Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Those include Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven and Oleg Deripaska.

The United States and its European allies have cast Putin's invasion as an imperial-style land grab that has so far been poorly executed because Moscow under-estimated Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve to punish Russia, Reuters further reported.

The West has sanctioned Russian businessmen, including European Union sanctions on Melnichenko, frozen state assets and cut off much of the Russian corporate sector from the global economy in an attempt to force defiant Putin to change course. Putin has called the war a “special military operation” to rid Ukraine of dangerous nationalists and Nazis.

"The events in Ukraine are truly tragic. We urgently need peace," Reuters made public a statement emailed by Melnichenko, 50, who is Russian but was born in Belarus and has a Ukrainian mother.

"One of the victims of this crisis will be agriculture and food," said Melnichenko, who founded EuroChem, Russia's largest ammonium nitrate producer, which is based in Zug, Switzerland, and SUEK, Russia's top coal producer.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced more than 2 million people, and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, the world's two biggest nuclear powers.

FOOD WAR?

Putin reportedly warned on Thursday that food prices would rise globally due to soaring fertiliser prices if the West created problems for Russia's export of fertilisers - which account for 13 percent of world output.

According to Reuters, Russia is a major producer of potash, phosphate and nitrogen containing fertilisers - major crop and soil nutrients.

The war "has already led to soaring prices in fertilisers which are no longer affordable to farmers," Melnichenko said. He said food supply chains already disrupted by COVID-19 were now even more distressed.

"Now it will lead to even higher food inflation in Europe and likely food shortages in the world’s poorest countries," he said.

Russia's trade and industry ministry told the country's fertiliser producers to temporarily halt exports earlier this month.