Putin Is Winning His Grain War, Pitting Poland Against Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s decision to end the deal that allowed Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain by sea is working for him. It has blown a hole in his enemy’s economy and driven a wedge between close allies, all without costing Russia support in the so-called Global South.

That fact became impossible to ignore this week, after an exchange of barbs between President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his Polish counterparts at the United Nations General Assembly in New York spun out of control. On Wednesday, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said his country, one of Ukraine’s largest suppliers of military aid, would send no more — a threat his government partly walked back on Thursday.