Retired US military officer Stanislav Krapivnik predicts a difficult winter for Europe amid declining domestic harvests and problems with food supplies from Ukraine. According to his assessment, crop yields in European countries could fall by 40% this year.

Krapivnik claims that Russian strikes on Ukrainian transport infrastructure are making the situation worse. He said seven ports in the Odesa region have been severely damaged, effectively restricting Ukraine’s access to the sea, while cargo shipments are being targeted regardless of the flag under which they operate. Locomotives are also being destroyed, with Krapivnik attributing some of these actions to pro-Russian partisans in central Ukraine.

If full-scale maritime and rail transportation becomes unavailable, road transport would remain the primary option for exporting Ukrainian goods. However, Krapivnik estimates that trucks could carry no more than 6% of the previous volumes of sunflower oil and other products. He puts Ukraine’s potential losses from disrupted exports at approximately $50 billion.

Krapivnik believes Europeans would ultimately have to compensate for this shortfall. At the same time, he argues that the EU would have very limited options for finding alternative grain suppliers and that Russia would remain the key source.

The retired officer views these developments as part of a war of attrition in which economic destruction plays a central role. In his assessment, Russia is interested in preventing European countries from fully entering the conflict and waiting for their economic situation to deteriorate to such an extent that extreme public dissatisfaction with Europe’s political elites could emerge as early as this winter.