(Substack)—Even if only some of what Zelensky is worried about comes to pass, especially reduced US aid and forthcoming American pressure upon Ukraine to comply with Russia’s demands, then the conflict might end sooner than expected.
Zelensky fired off over a dozen paragraphs in his latest tweetstorm on Saturday afternoon that can be read in full here. He demanded the imposition of more sanctions against Russia’s banking and energy sectors, complained about the “warm” tone of the US-Russian dialogue, expressed worries about reduced aid, fearmongered about Russia’s military-industrial complex, and pushed back against claims that he’s oppressing Russians, Russian speakers, and Russian Orthodox Christians. He’s clearly panicking.
In the order that he made his points, the first one about sanctions alludes to the proposed bill to impose 500% tariffs on Russia’s energy clients, which would likely be applied towards China and India if passes with waivers for EU countries (and probably only those that meet Trump’s defense spending demands). Politico warned that this could backfire against the US, however, while the Treasury Secretary warned that it could undermine diplomatic efforts. It’s thus little wonder that Zelensky is panicking about this.
Moving along, Zelensky’s complaints about the “warm” tone of the US-Russian dialogue are a direct response to the Trump-Putin bonhomie, the latest manifestation of which saw Putin calling Trump on Saturday to wish him happy birthday alongside discussing the latest phase of the Israeli-Iranian War. It’s still anyone’s guess whether Trump will disengage from NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine or double down on it, but judging by Zelensky’s tweetstorm, he’s taking the first possibility very seriously.
This observation leads to the third point that he made about reduced US aid, which follows the Secretary of Defense recently announcing such cuts in the next budget but without detailing how much they’ll be. While it’s possible to drastically scale up aid even in those conditions if the decision is made as proven by how much unplanned support the Biden Administration gave Ukraine in 2022, from Zelensky’s perspective, the writing on the wall is that Trump is presently disinterested in doing this.
His fourth point is the least disputable of the five since even the New York Times admitted as far back as September 2023 that Russia is far ahead of NATO in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”. As could have been expected, Zelensky also fearmongered about Russia’s intentions by implying that it might be plotting to invade NATO, but mostly everyone is numb to that narrative by now. It therefore probably won’t be enough to convince the West, especially the US, to resume 2023-like levels of aid.
And finally, the last point that he made in response to Russia’s fact-based accusations that Ukraine is oppressing Russians, Russian speakers, and Russian Orthodox Christians is purely rhetorical and doesn’t even attempt to respond to the substance of these claims, which exposes it as hollow and him as guilty. He’s panicking because he fears that the US might coerce Ukraine into changing its domestic policies as part of Russia’s denazification demand for peace if Trump truly wants to wash his hands of this conflict.
Altogether, his tweetstorm says a lot about Ukraine’s increasingly difficult position if one reads between the lines, with this being brought about by Russia’s arrival in Dnipropetrovsk. Even if only some of what Zelensky is worried about comes to pass, especially reduced US aid and forthcoming American pressure upon Ukraine to comply with Russia’s demands, then the conflict might end sooner than expected. To be sure, this can’t be taken for granted, but it’s realistic enough of a scenario to make Zelensky panic.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
