MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. Kiev’s military campaign to provoke chaos on food markets, including strikes on infrastructure in the Azov-Black Sea waters, serves the interests of a number of Western countries, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"It is clear that the cynical military campaign by the Kiev regime to provoke chaos on the global food market serves the interests of a number of Western countries, given that Ukraine’s share of global food production is very small, no matter how hard the Kiev regime tries to prove otherwise," the diplomat said in a commentary.

"It dovetails with the illegitimate unilateral restrictions in the financial, economic and energy sectors imposed by the Kiev regime’s Western handlers, who pursue a neocolonial ‘rules-based order,’" she added.

All this "exacerbates shortages of grain and fertilizers, drives up global food prices and increases the costs for countries in the Global South and East, which have become hostages to the irresponsible policies of these ‘players,’" Zakharova concluded.