As a glorious summer draws to a close, across the Ukrainian steppe silos are brimming with a bumper harvest. For farmers such as Volodymyr Varbanets, who has worked the same stretch of land since the 1970s when it was a Soviet collective farm, it should be a season to celebrate. Yet it is not.\u2060
\n\u2060
\nThanks to Russia\u2019s ferocious new bombing campaign against ships in the Black Sea and Ukraine\u2019s cities and ports, the mounds of barley, sunflower seeds and wheat in Varbanets\u2019 giant barn are stranded. Increasingly, the grizzled 76-year-old fears his crop will end up rotting where it lies.\u2060
\n\u2060
\nThe scene of thwarted abundance, mirrored at farms across Ukraine, reflects a dramatic shift in momentum in the four-and-a-half-year conflict. It has grave implications not just for global food supplies but for Ukraine\u2019s economy, its survival strategy and potentially the course of the war, explains the FT’s Alec Russell.\u2060<\/p>\n
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