On Monday, the United States accused Russia at the U.N. Security Council of fueling civil war in Sudan by funding both warring parties.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council, “Russia chose obstruction: standing alone as it voted to imperil civilians while funding both sides of the conflict.”
Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, disputed the U.S. accusations, saying that the “Western nations” were the “external sponsors of instability” in Sudan and were using the crisis “to undermine” the African nation’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Hunger, he said, was one of the issues exploited by the West for political gains.
Polyanskiy questioned the Famine Review Committee’s credibility and the accuracy of its 2024 report on Sudan.
“Let us emphasize right away that Sudan is not experiencing nor can experience a severe famine. Upon examining the FRC report we couldn’t but think that the issue of hunger in Sudan is being politicized and exploited to exert pressure on the Sudanese government. We have an impression that someone is desperate for famine to eventually begin in Sudan,” Polyanskiy said.
That claim is misleading.
The Famine Review Committee is a U.N.-supported independent international organization headquartered in Rome. FRC employs internationally recognized experts on food security, nutrition and public health.
The 2024 FRC report said at least five areas of Sudan were suffering from famine and projected it would spread in five additional areas between December 2024 and May 2025.
U.N. agencies UNICEF, the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization corroborated the FRC report.
“More than 24.6 million people across Sudan are now experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity,” UNICEF reported in August 2024.
WFP Director Jean-Martin Bauer described the situation as a “protracted famine.”
“People are getting weaker and weaker and are dying as they have had little to no access to food for months and months,” Bauer said in December.
Armed conflict, forced displacement and restricted humanitarian access are the leading causes of famine in Sudan, following a civil war that started in April 2023 between two factions locked in a power struggle: the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
The Sudanese government protested the latest FRC report that declared famine and pulled out of the global hunger-monitoring system on December 23.
Last June the U.N. Human Rights Office accused the “Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF of using starvation as a weapon of war.”
The experts warned that the warring parties were blocking ”humanitarian aid, and the harvest season has been disrupted due to the armed conflict, making widespread famine imminent in the coming months.”
In November, Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution on Sudan that called “for a comprehensive, nationwide ceasefire; for increased protection of civilians; and for unhindered flow of humanitarian aid into and across Sudan.”
The U.S. and others believe Russia benefits from hostilities in Sudan, a spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the U.N. told Reuters, stating that Washington was aware of Russia’s “ongoing interest in Sudan’s gold trade” and condemns any material support for the warring parties – “whether it be through illicit gold trading or the provision of military equipment.”
In 2022, a CNN investigation estimated that Russia may have gained up to $13.4 billion worth of gold from Sudan in exchange for weapons.
On Wednesday, the U.S. accused the Rapid Support Forces of committing genocide and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, also known as Hemedti.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”
The war in Sudan has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, according to the U.N., leaving 638,000 Sudanese experiencing famine, over 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands dead.
