>>51063
>It's always cheaper to sell to countries close
Not necessarily true. Depends on some factors, like local production, or tariffs, or whatnot. Also if distance would matter then selling locally would be the cheapest.
>cheap enough to out-price European farmers
Not necessarily true. Depends on some factors. For example Western Euro farmers hate competition, and they can sell their crap in Eastern EU (in typical agricultural countries - like Hungary - too) dirt cheap, due to subsidies they get from their govts. and perhaps from EU too. Heh I bet Western govts. pressured Eastern EU countries to ban Ukrainian grain the first place, we'll never know.
>infrastructure issue.
EU countries contesting with each other who can offer their ports for export quicker. Croatia too.
>Maybe that's the intention, maybe this is a prelude to a peace settlement.
That sounds like an astute observation, you might be right.
This offensive doesn't going anywhere and good for nothing but to waste human and material resources. Perhaps NATO bigwigs think Russia doesn't prepare any major attack, they are comfy allowing Ukraine to do it and let them bleed out. It would be easier for Ukraine to sat behind the lines too. Maybe there really aren't much more weapons to give. Must be people in the West who also rather want peace like this (have investments in Ukraine). The question is how to pressure Ukraine to sit down and negotiate? How to give justification for the Ukrainian people to accept the losses?
Also some news says the USA will raise artillery ammo production to 100K per month... by 2030. That won't help Ukraine today.