How Putin just spiked worldwide wheat prices

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Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have declared open season on Ukraine’s consequential grain exports, targeting the port city of Odesa with new ferocity and jeopardizing worldwide food prices.

With the strikes on Odesa, Putin says he wants payback for damage to a nearly 12-mile bridge that connects annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland.

But they also coincide with Russia’s retreat from a yearlong deal known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative to keep Ukrainian grain flowing to the world.

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While Russia’s food exports are supposed to be exempt from Western sanctions, Russia has cited obstacles to its own exports as a reason to pull out of the Ukraine grain deal.

The attacks on Odesa, meanwhile, lit up the night sky Monday and Tuesday and targeted the city’s port, a key piece of infrastructure where Russia had allowed grain to be exported as part of the deal brokered last July by the United Nations and Turkey.

Russia, by the way, was already smarting over Turkey’s decision to allow Sweden to enter NATO, apparently alongside promises by the US to let Turkey buy F-16 fighter jets.

Then Ukraine claimed credit for damage to the bridge Monday, just as the future of the grain deal came into question.

On Tuesday, US Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power visited Odesa to announce an additional $250 million in support for Ukraine’s agriculture sector, which is a key block of the worldwide wheat market.

I asked Alex Marquardt, CNN’s senior national security correspondent who is in Odesa, about the attacks this week and whether they can be directly tied to the grain issue and Putin’s anger…