THE savage war of Vladimir Putin against the peaceful people of Ukraine is the work of a man with ambitions bent on trying to secure his place in Russian history as the leader who restored the false 'glory' of the Russian Soviet Union that disintegrated in 1989. There was no 'glory' there but oppression, occupation of half of Europe and a Cold War that threatened nuclear annihilation of the world.

Putin's massively destructive war, with continuous atrocities and war crimes, is now threatening another form of annihilation — that of millions of people in Africa and the Middle East that depend on Ukrainian wheat, maize and cooking oil as do other poor nations of the world.