Russia–Ukraine: At the Agricultural Roots of a Global Upheaval

This article is an extract from the introduction to the book Russie-Ukraine : la guerre hybride. Aux racines agricoles d’un bouleversement mondial by Sébastien Abis (Dunod, Armand Colin, 2026).

It is impossible to understand the war in Ukraine if one ignores its agricultural dimension. Too often relegated to the background, it nonetheless constitutes a key analytical lens. Approaching this conflict through an agricultural prism means better deciphering the world in which we live and better anticipating the one now taking shape.

For centuries, Ukrainian territory has been coveted for its agricultural resources. In antiquity, Athenian democracy sourced grain there which it could not produce itself; closer to us, Stalin and Hitler plundered these fertile lands for cereals to wage their wars. This long historical trajectory is not contradicted by more recent developments. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and the USSR collapsed, it relied without hesitation on its agricultural potential to develop and secure a place on the international stage. This process gained momentum from the beginning of the twenty-first century, with harvests increasing thanks to sector modernisation and substantial investment, including from abroad. An agricultural giant (re)emerged, built on a triptych of sunflower, maize and wheat, each competing to embody the yellow of the national flag.

Its Russian neighbour, since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, has followed a similar agricultural path. It embarked upon it with geopolitical ambitions far exceeding mere national economic returns and global food demand. Having regained hyper-power status in wheat at the start of the 2010s, Russia expanded its production capacities across the board, aware of widening opportunities on the global market. Consumption has been rising under the dual effect of demographic and socio-economic growth. As the world’s largest country, Russia has leveraged its geographical advantages to compete on this global field and progressively weaponise the food dependencies it creates with pivotal states or those too weak to resist Moscow’s appeal.

From 2014 onwards, beyond the escalation of hostilities between Russians and Ukrainians, a geo-economic war developed between the Kremlin and the European Union, as an embargo on European agricultural and food products was erected in response to Brussels’ sanctions. Within a decade, Europe lost a major market and gained a formidable competitor, while itself being torn between the pace of agricultural transitions required — amid an overheating climate agenda — and a strategic awakening prompted by the shock of Covid and the intensification of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which has chilled the EU.

This geo-history of the first quarter of the century — in which agriculture and food have never been more necessary for societies nor more mobilised as instruments of power — reveals the extent to which the Russo-Ukrainian agricultural war knows no borders: neither spatial, nor temporal, nor sectoral. The cascade effect is in full swing. Behind military confrontations and maps of offensives lies another struggle, quieter yet equally decisive: that of agricultural production, grain circulation, access to fertilisers and the security of supplies. The conflict brutally reminds us of what many had come to forget: agriculture is a weapon. It can enable development and foster peace, or, at times, fuel rivalry and oppression.

Russia did not wait for the war to assert itself in this domain. Since the early 2000s, Moscow has methodically rearmed its agriculture. Public investment, consolidation of powerful private actors, export controls, diplomatic projection — an entire arsenal that has enabled the country to return as one of the world’s leading agricultural powers. By contrast, Ukraine, an immense fertile breadbasket, has continually been hindered by internal blockages, legal uncertainties and geopolitical tensions. It had embarked upon a promising trajectory, but the war abruptly halted this momentum.

The result is an agricultural battle within the military battle. Black Sea ports closed or mined; harvests compromised by fighting and pollution; storage and transport infrastructure targeted by bombardment; grain corridors negotiated and then suspended — all scenes in which war is also measured in terms of hunger. Depriving a country of its agricultural exports reduces its ability to finance its war effort, but also destabilises its trading partners and food-importing clients, often located in the most fragile regions of the globe.

The Russo-Ukrainian war also compels the European Union (EU) to change. A new era is opening — unquestionably more demanding and less comfortable for the EU, its Member States and their populations. Mental frameworks must be updated to avoid entering this century with anachronistic or naïve visions. In this respect, the EU must recognise that its own agricultural prospects are undergoing profound recomposition. The Europe of food security and stability, long underpinned by the Common Agricultural Policy, is being transformed within a geopolitical, economic and climatic context that is overturning former balances. Ukraine, with its uncertainties, catalyses the challenges the EU must confront — challenges that could weaken it in the absence of strategic foresight and responsible collective action.

In this geopolitical era of hippopotamuses — fierce, swift and polygamous — Europe cannot bury its head in the sand and ignore the upheavals under way. For it too, agricultural production rhymes with power. Does the EU intend to turn towards the future?