MOSCOW: Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said he is ready to step in if necessary and ensure that Syria gets the wheat it needs in what he said was the unlikely event that Russian wheat supplies to the country were disrupted.
Russian and Syrian sources told Reuters on Friday that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended due to uncertainty about the new government there after two vessels carrying Russian wheat for Syria failed to reach their destinations.
In a message posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Kadyrov said that the two rerouted vessels had been carrying “commercial” wheat and that Russian state-backed supplies to Syria had not been affected.
“Even if for some impossible and incredible reasons this does happen, I, as the head of the Chechen Republic, am ready to take responsibility and ensure the necessary amount of wheat for Syria,” Kadyrov wrote.
Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, supplies wheat to Syria through complex financial and logistical arrangements, circumventing Western sanctions imposed on both countries. It is not clear what share of wheat is supplied by the state.
Kadyrov did not specify how he would organize and finance wheat supplies to Syria if he had to step in and where the wheat would come from.
But he said he could act, if necessary, via a charitable fund named after his late father which helped to rebuild some mosques and provided humanitarian aid to Syria during ousted President Bashar Assad’s rule.
Russian analysts estimate Russia’s exports to Syria at 300,000 tons so far this season, with the country ranking 24th among buyers of Russian wheat. They estimate Syria’s total wheat imports at about 2 million tons.
Russia is the main supplier of wheat to Syria, and disruption in supplies could cause hunger in the country of over 23 million people. Sources told Reuters the two sides are in contact regarding supplies. (Reporting by Olga Popova and Gleb Bryanski Editing by Andrew Osborn)

NAIROBI: Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias, at war with the army, of committing widespread sexual violence in southern Sudan.
It is the latest such report by international monitors alleging sexual violence during Sudan’s 20-month war which has led to what the United States called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In its new report, HRW said it had documented dozens of cases since September 2023 involving women and girls aged between seven and 50 who were subjected to sexual violence, including gang rape and sexual slavery, in South Kordofan state.
The latest details follow a separate report last week from the New York-based watchdog which more broadly accused the RSF and allied Arab militias of carrying out numerous abuses, mainly against ethnic Nuba civilians, in South Kordofan state from December 2023 to March 2024.
These attacks, it said, “had not been widely reported” and constituted “war crimes.”
Parts of South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile state are controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a rebel group.
The SPLM-N faction led by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu refused to join other Sudan rebels in signing a 2020 peace deal with the government, as Hilu sought a secular state as a prerequisite.
Many South Kordofan residents are members of Sudan’s Christian minority.
Hilu also at that time refused talks with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, linking him with atrocities.
SPLM-N has clashed with both the army and RSF in parts of South Kordofan since April, 2023 when the war between the paramilitaries and Sudanese Armed Forces began, HRW said.
The conflict has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, internally displaced more than eight million, according to the UN, and forced more than three million others to seek safety in neighboring countries.
According to the HRW report, many of the victims were gang-raped at their or their neighbors’ homes, often in front of families while some were abducted and held in conditions of enslavement.
One survivor, a 35-year-old Nuba woman, described being gang-raped by six RSF fighters who stormed her family compound and killed her husband and son when they tried to intervene.
“They kept raping me, all six of them,” she said.
Another survivor, aged 18, recounted being taken in February with 17 others to a base where they joined 33 detained women and girls.
“On a daily basis for three months, the fighters raped and beat the women and girls, including the 18-year-old survivor, crimes that also constitute sexual slavery,” HRW said.
At times, the captives were even chained together, it said.
“These acts of sexual violence, which constitute war crimes... underscore the urgent need for meaningful international action to protect civilians and deliver justice,” HRW said in its report.
The UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher raised the alarm late in November over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in Sudan, saying that the world “must do better.”
In October, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said both sides have committed abuses including torture and sexual violence. But it accused the paramilitaries, in particular, of “sexual violence on a large scale.”
These included “gang rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery,” the mission said.
In its initial report last week, HRW urged the UN and African Union to “urgently deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.”