Russian President Vladimir Putin's assistant for economic affairs said that the world would face severe food shortages by 2022.
Russia has accused Washington of trying to withdraw grain reserves from Ukraine, threatening a global crisis.
These statements come a day after United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Russia to allow the export of Ukrainian grain stored in this country's ports and demanded the West to enable Russian food and fertilizers to reach global markets, in two measures he confirmed would contribute to solving the growing global food crisis.
"Russia must allow the safe and secure export of grain stored in Ukrainian ports," Guterres said at a ministerial meeting in New York organized by the United States.
He added that it is also possible to "explore alternative transportation routes" to the sea lane for exporting these grains, which are stored primarily in silts in Odesa's Black Sea port city, "even if we know that this will not be enough to solve the problem."
The Secretary-General sounded the alarm because "the specter of global food shortage looms in the coming months," stressing that "if we do not feed people, we are fueling conflicts."
He said that the war in Ukraine doubled the factors that contributed to the global food crisis and accelerated its pace, noting that these factors are climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widening gap between rich and poor countries.
The Secretary-General warned that the current crisis "could last for years" and "threatens to push tens of millions of people into food insecurity, malnutrition and starvation."
"In just two years, the number of acutely food insecure people has doubled, from 135 million before the start of the pandemic to 276 million today," he noted.
In a related context, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, said that "22 million tons" of grain are currently in silos in Ukraine and are only waiting to be exported.
The US Secretary explained that his country had decided to allocate an "additional $215 million" to combat food insecurity.
Russia and Ukraine together account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies. Ukraine is also a major exporter of corn, barley, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil, while Russia and Belarus - which has backed Moscow in its war in Ukraine - account for more than 40% of global exports of potash, a crop nutrient.