The Russia-Ukraine War Is Still Affecting Your Grocery Bill in India — Here Is How

I do the grocery shopping for my household most weekends. Standing in the supermarket in Chennai, looking at the price of sunflower oil, I am aware — in a way that I was not aware three or four years ago — that the number on that price tag is connected to events happening thousands of kilometres away in Eastern Europe. The Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022 and has continued in various forms since, has had effects on food prices in India that are still being felt by ordinary people doing ordinary grocery shopping.

I want to explain this connection clearly because I think it is genuinely interesting and genuinely important — and because understanding it changes how you think about both the war and about the globalised food system that India is deeply embedded in.

Why Ukraine and Russia Matter for Indian Food

Before the war, Ukraine and Russia together accounted for approximately 30 percent of global wheat exports and around 75 to 80 percent of global sunflower oil exports. These are not marginal contributions — they are dominant positions in global commodity markets that feed hundreds of millions of people across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

India is the world's second largest wheat producer and is largely self-sufficient in wheat under normal conditions. But the global wheat market is interconnected in ways that mean even countries that produce their own wheat are affected when global prices spike. When Ukrainian wheat stopped flowing normally due to the war, global wheat prices rose dramatically — and those price signals eventually reached the Indian market and Indian consumers.

Sunflower oil is where the impact has been most directly visible in Indian kitchens. India imports a significant portion of its edible oil, and sunflower oil from Ukraine was a major part of that import picture. When Ukrainian sunflower oil exports were disrupted, Indian consumers experienced sharp price increases in cooking oil — something that was widely reported and widely felt by households across the country.

What I Noticed at the Grocery Store

The price increases I observed in my own weekly shopping were real and significant enough to change purchasing decisions. Sunflower oil prices roughly doubled at peak disruption. Even after prices partially normalised as India sourced more oil from other producers, they did not return to pre-war levels. The baseline had shifted.

The Russia-Ukraine war taught me something about globalisation that I intellectually knew but had never personally experienced so directly — that the food on your plate in Chennai is connected to geopolitical events on the other side of the world in ways that are more immediate and more tangible than any news article makes them feel.

The Fertiliser Problem That Gets Less Attention

Beyond wheat and sunflower oil, there is another connection between the Russia-Ukraine war and Indian food prices that gets less media attention but may be equally significant over the longer term — fertilisers. Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of fertilisers, particularly nitrogen-based fertilisers that are essential for growing the food crops that feed India's population.

Sanctions and supply chain disruptions following the war significantly affected global fertiliser availability and prices. Higher fertiliser costs for Indian farmers translate directly into higher production costs, which eventually translate into higher food prices for Indian consumers. This transmission mechanism is slower than the immediate oil price effect but equally real.

What India Has Done to Manage the Impact

The Indian government has taken several steps to manage the food price impact of the Russia-Ukraine war. Wheat export bans were imposed when domestic prices rose, to protect Indian consumers from global price spikes. Import duties on edible oils were reduced to make imports cheaper. These are reasonable short-term responses, but they illustrate the degree to which India's food security is affected by events it has no control over.

The Bigger Picture

The Russia-Ukraine war has made me think differently about food security and India's position in the global economy. The fact that a conflict between two countries in Eastern Europe can materially affect what I pay for cooking oil in Chennai is both remarkable and sobering. It is a reminder that globalisation creates genuine interdependencies — not just in technology and finance, where I see it most clearly in my IT work, but in the most basic necessities of daily life.