Turning food into a geopolitical lever: crucial lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine

How can the EU foster long-term strategic autonomy of its food system?

Europe often treats food security as a given. The EU discards over 58 million tonnes of food a year - about 130 kg per person - worth an estimated €132 billion. That abundance, however, can be misleading. The war in Ukraine, dependence on external inputs, and climate-driven harvest shocks have shown how quickly availability and prices can be weaponised. We need to rethink food security in terms of resilience - of corridors, inputs and neighbours on which Europe relies.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine cracked any assumption on food security, exposing the EU’s hidden dependencies on Ukrainian maize, sunflower oil, and - crucially - Russian and Belarusian fertilisers. Record-breaking European droughts and climate-stressed harvests in the EU’s neighborhood are worsening the situation, turning food into a geopolitical lever as potent as gas, with crucial implications for the next migration crises. Within this context, this analysis investigates why Western European countries have chosen Ukrainian dependencies for food security and argues that climate shocks and chokepoints (e.g., Black Sea grain initiative), are now a single risk system shaping EU prices, strategy, and politics. 

Above all, the war in Ukraine revealed the geopolitical fragility of food security. Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly 12% of all food calories traded globally before the war. Ukraine – often called the “breadbasket of Europe” – was among the world’s top exporters of wheat, maize, barley and sunflower oil. Russia’s invasion in 2022 drastically disrupted this output: Ukraine’s grain production fell by 29% in the 2022/23 season, as farming areas were abandoned or destroyed. 

The naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports brought grain exports to a standstill, sending shockwaves through global markets. Wheat prices spiked over 50% year-on-year by March 2022, exacerbating food inflation worldwide. Regions that depended heavily on affordable Black Sea grain – from North Africa to the Middle East – faced acute supply risks. This conflict arrived on the heels of pandemic-era disruptions and existing climate-related crop failures, creating a serious convergence of crises for global food supply. 

EU grain dependency post-Ukraine War 

Within the European Union, the immediate threat consisted of price and input shocks. The EU is largely self-sufficient in staple crops and animal products; therefore, basic food availability was not at stake. For example, major EU producers like France and Germany grow substantial wheat and barley.

However, the war revealed crucial strategic dependencies. Europe imported significant quantities of specific commodities from Ukraine and Russia – notably sunflower oil, corn for animal feed, and fertiliser. In fact, the EU relied on Russia and Belarus for roughly 59% of its potassium fertilizer imports and 31% of its nitrogen fertilizer imports before the war. The sudden loss of these supplies sent fertiliser prices soaring and threatened Europe’s agricultural output. Likewise, Ukraine had become a key source of maize and sunflower products for the EU, now disrupted by the conflict. The European Parliamentary Research Service noted in April 2022 that while the EU’s food supply was secure, its agricultural system’s dependence on imported inputs (fuel, feed, fertiliser) left it vulnerable to market volatility. Moreover, rising costs hit Europe’s consumers – especially low-income households. Even before the war, 8.6% of the EU population could not afford a quality meal every other day (as of 2020); the price inflation following 2022 further jeopardised food affordability for Europe’s poorest.

Thus, the geopolitical strife translated into a socio-economic strain within the EU, fueling debates on how to reduce external dependencies. In response, the EU coordinated “solidarity lanes” to overland transport Ukrainian grain and supported a UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that created procedures to safely export grain from certain Ukrainian ports to attempt to address the crisis and stabilise global supplies. These actions helped temper the worst of the price spikes, but the war’s continuation (and Russia’s later exit from the grain deal) means Europe and the world remain exposed to food insecurity as a tool of geopolitical leverage.

Europe’s reliance on Ukrainian cereals did not happen by accident. It reflected a rational blend of price competitiveness, agro-ecological advantage, and policy architecture that lowered trade frictions and increased regulatory confidence. On price, Ukraine’s cost base has long been structurally lower than that of many EU producers: large field parcels, relatively cheap land and labour, and fertile soils reduce unit costs for export crops such as wheat, maize and sunflower. Proximity to EU and Mediterranean demand centres adds a logistics edge over trans-Atlantic or South American suppliers, reinforcing Ukraine’s price competitiveness in grains and oilseeds. Meanwhile, the chernozem (black) soils across much of Ukraine’s grain belt confer high natural fertility and yield potential, requiring comparatively less input per tonne produced - another underpinning of sustained low costs. This “cost plus soil” combination made Ukraine a consistently attractive marginal supplier for European mills, crushers, and feed manufacturers even before the war.

Rules and control are an equally relevant driver. Since 2016, the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) has progressively removed tariffs on most agri-food lines and - crucially - required Ukraine to approximate EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules, aligning quality, traceability and risk-management systems with EU norms. That legal convergence substantially reduced regulatory friction and increased EU buyers’ confidence in compliance and oversight (“control of process”). After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Brussels went further: Autonomous Trade Measures (Reg. 2022/870) temporarily suspended remaining tariffs/quotas for Ukrainian goods and eased procedures, accelerating flows via road/rail “solidarity lanes” and Black Sea corridor windows. Those measures, since recalibrated with emergency brakes/quotas as farmer-pressure mounted, locked in Ukraine’s role as a swing supplier to the EU feed and crushing complex.

Italy’s experience illustrates how these drivers stacked together. The 2022 Po-Valley drought and heat stress weakened domestic cereal yields, especially for water-sensitive crops, and tightened feed markets. In the same window, Eurostat/COMEXT data show Italy rose as one of the top three EU destinations for Ukrainian grain, and by the end period of July 2024–May 2025 it accounted for roughly 21% of EU maize imports from Ukraine - a clear sign that Italian feed users leaned on Ukrainian corn to bridge domestic shortfalls and price spikes. Therefore, Europe’s  “Ukraine dependency” emerged from all three drivers: cost advantages anchored in fertile soils and scale; climate/soil suitability that kept Ukraine competitive year after year; and EU-Ukraine legal alignment that lowered barriers and tightened SPS controls. The logic for this reliance was coherent - the war simply exposed how concentrated that logic had become.

The perilous intricacies with climate change and migration

Even though the EU’s rationale for this dependency had a coherent basis, the war exposed the geopolitical risks while climate change simultaneously increased pressure on food systems. Climate extremes are making harvests less predictable and more volatile. Europe’s own experience in 2022 illustrated this clearly: a severe heatwave and drought that summer – intensified by climate change – caused EU yields of grain maize, sunflower, and soybeans to drop by an average of 15% compared to the previous five-year norm. Southern Europe saw historic drought conditions, stressing water resources and reducing crop output. Globally, the pattern is similar. Droughts, heat waves, floods and other extremes linked to climate change are increasingly disrupting agriculture, from the Horn of Africa to South Asia.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that warming temperatures and shifting rainfall are a “threat multiplier” for food security, exacerbating the risk of crop failures and price spikes in vulnerable regions. Notably, multiple breadbasket failures can occur if extreme weather hits major producers simultaneously, a scenario that becomes more likely as climate instability grows. In 2022-2023, for instance, the Ukraine war’s supply shock was compounded by poor harvests in China (flooding) and parts of Europe (drought), tightening global grain availability. Higher frequencies of such compound events present a geopolitical challenge: nations may impose export bans to protect their own supply, as seen in 2022 when countries from Indonesia to Hungary briefly restricted food exports. Such unilateral moves are counterintuitive because they amplify global scarcity. The EU has generally cautioned against export restrictions inside its single market and worked to keep trade flows open, recalling the lessons of the 2007–08 food price crisis.

Climate-induced food insecurity does not only threaten economies – it also fuels human displacement and migration, which carry additional geopolitical implications for Europe. When harvests collapse and livelihoods erode, populations in hard-hit regions may be forced to move in search of stability. Climate change is already displacing millions: in 2022, roughly 32.6 million people were newly displaced by climate-related disasters (storms, droughts, floods) around the world. Many of these were internal migrants or refugees in developing countries, but the ripple effects can reach Europe in the form of increased migration flows from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Environmental stress often interacts with political instability to spark conflict and out-migration. A frequently cited example is the severe drought of 2006–2010 in Syria – research indicates this drought (likely made more intense by climate change) devastated crop and livestock production, driving 1 to 1.5 million rural Syrians to migrate into cities. This mass internal displacement fueled social unrest that contributed to the 2011 Syrian uprising and the ensuing refugee crisis. European countries later received hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, illustrating how a climate stressor half a world away can translate into political and humanitarian challenges in the EU. Similar links between climate, conflict and migration have been observed in the Sahel and East Africa, where prolonged droughts and resource competition inflame violence and push people to seek refuge elsewhere. The European Investment Bank observes that shortages of food and water caused by climate change are already fueling conflicts and displacement in fragile states.

In security terms, climate change is thus amplifying instability in Europe’s neighborhood, raising the prospect of more “climate refugees” in the future. European policymakers have begun to acknowledge this dynamic: the EU’s external action and development aid now stress climate adaptation, resilience, and conflict prevention in climate-vulnerable regions. Therefore, the geopolitics of food security for Europe now inherently encompasses climate factors – ensuring a stable food supply is not just about markets and trade, but also about climate mitigation and helping vulnerable societies adapt to avoid collapse and mass migration. The EU is facing an interconnected risk system that cannot be ignored.

The way forward: a durable policy frame

Against the complexity and intricacies of this risk system, how can the EU convert short-term crisis management into long-term strategic autonomy? This is a daunting question for EU policymakers. The EU’s solidarity lane approach and its support for the Black Sea Grain Initiative represent only temporary solutions to a very real and magnifying problem.

To shift from crisis response to strategic resilience, Brussels should translate these ad-hoc measures into a durable policy frame that directly targets the identified vulnerabilities. A first pillar is diversification: reducing fertiliser dependence on Russia and Belarus by broadening the supplier base and investing in domestic innovation for key farm inputs. In parallel, maintaining redundant sea, river and rail corridors would mitigate exposure to Black Sea chokepoints, ensuring staples can still move when a primary route is disrupted. Modest, rules-based strategic reserves, designed to be released quickly, would help stabilise prices during compound climate shocks rather than only in isolated crises. Finally, directing adaptation finance – into irrigation, cold chains, storage and risk insurance – both within the Union and across the Sahel and North Africa would ease migration pressures from climate-vulnerable regions by shoring up local food systems.

Coupled with clear, predictable trade rules and timely transparency, these measures would underpin shared security: a sturdier system that reduces volatility for European households, limits the leverage of actors who would weaponise food, and eases the migration pressures that follow climate-driven crop failures. Ignoring the imperative of this question is no longer an option - the potential consequences promise to be devastating and all-encompassing, with ramifications that may even surprise our current understanding.