Sanctions on Russia may increase global food prices, claims Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Western sanctions on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine could send global food prices soaring, as Russia was one of the world's main producers of fertiliser, which is essential to global supply chains.

"Russia and Belarus are some of the biggest suppliers of mineral fertilisers. If they continue to create problems for the financing and logistics of the delivery of our goods, then prices will rise and this will affect the final product, food products," Putin said at a televised government meeting.

Meanwhile, western countries continue to put pressure on Russia. The European Union on Thursday (March 10) said that Russia's bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol was a 'war crime'.

"Mariupol is under siege. Russia's shelling of (a) maternity hospital is a heinous war crime," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote in a tweet.

"Strikes of residential areas from the air and blocks of access of aid convoys by the Russian forces must immediately stop. Safe passage is needed, now," he added.

European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen called the attack "inhumane, cruel and tragic".

"I am convinced that this can be a war crime. We need a full investigation," she tweeted.

The children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol was attacked on Wednesday in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as a Russian "war crime", and which sparked global outrage.

(With inputs from agencies)