At a press conference in the nation’s capital, Kampala, Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “Countries can obtain Russian agricultural products, including fertilizer and wheat,” following a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Museveni, who backs the US, has exhibited a fondness for Moscow and hasn’t condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
She added that if a nation decides to engage with Russia in a region where sanctions are in place, it “runs the potential of having steps done against them.”
The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visited Africa a week prior to her trip. During his tour, he disputed assertions that a dangerous food crisis hitting countries like Somalia and South Sudan is exclusively attributable to his country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lavrov blamed the market food shortages on “the completely inadequate response of the West, which issued sanctions,” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Major producers of wheat, barley, corn, and sunflower oil for the global market include Russia and Ukraine. Conflict in the so-called “breadbasket of the world,” the Black Sea region, has driven up food prices, challenged the political stability of emerging nations, and led some countries to put export limits on specific goods.
Many African countries, some of which have sections on the verge of famine, are heavily reliant on food supplies from Russia and Ukraine.
According to Thomas-Greenfield, the rising cost of food in Africa and other regions of the world is not the result of Washington’s sanctions.
She said the U.S. has “common objectives” with Museveni, an autocrat who has been in power for 36 years, and that it seeks to fortify its current relationships with African countries like Uganda.
Uganda is one of the 25 African nations who opted out of voting in the U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Since the Cold War, when the Soviet Union supported their anti-colonial campaigns, many countries on the 1.3 billion-person continent have enjoyed close connections with Moscow.
When Museveni declared during Lavrov’s visit that Russia has been a friend to the country of East Africa for more than 100 years, he seemed to be under pressure to endorse the American position on the war in Ukraine.
