Does Putin really want to see himself ranked with Hitler and Genghis Khan?

 Bloomberg reports:

Ukraine and Russia together account for about a quarter of the world’s grain trade, and disruption to shipments from the Black Sea region is bringing turmoil to the global market.

With the price of corn at a decade high and wheat soaring, the United Nations has warned an additional 13 million people could be left undernourished. Drought-affected countries across the Horn of Africa are likely to be the hardest hit, the World Food Programme says.

The threat to the remaining Black Sea ports from which grain is exported, and the grain stores in those cities, is very real. By continuing his destructive attrition of Ukraine, Putin is jeopardising the lives of people far away who have no part in his quarrel with the West.

Having laid waste Mariupol, he is resisting entreaties from humanitarian organisations around the world to allow the few thousand remaining citizens and defending soldiers to be evacuated. He is demanding their total surrender, with no guarantees as to how they will be treated in Russian custody. One trusts that Lavrov reflects the official policy when he asserts that Russia will use only conventional weapons in her renewed offensive against Ukraine. That should rule out not only nuclear, chemical and biological weapons but also the use of thermobaric weapons which would visit excruciating death on those sheltering in the tunnels beneath the old steel works in Mariupol.