He stole it and took it to Moscow. How the Russians are trying to sell stolen Ukrainian grain to other countries

How much grain did the Russian robbers take out of the occupied territories of Ukraine, what is happening with that and how the Government plans to prevent the sale of stolen Ukrainian grain to other countries. With each passing day of the occupation of Ukrainian cities, the facts about Russian crimes are becoming more numerous.

Farmers from the temporarily occupied areas talk about how the occupiers stole their property and supplies or forced them to sell their crops for nothing. City dwellers are experiencing a significant rise in food prices in stores.

It is already known that Russia steals and exports hundreds of thousands of tons of grain from the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The same applies to vegetables and agricultural machinery owned by Ukrainian companies.

The confiscation of cereals and other products, their illegal export, and even attempts to inadvertently sell stolen goods abroad point to the tragedy of the 1930s - the Holodomor. The Russian occupiers are not inventing anything new, they are just imitating Soviet methods.

Despite the difficulties in obtaining information from these territories, Ukrainians have the opportunity to document crimes in order to remember everything in the future and force them to compensate for the damage. How and why is grain exported from Ukrainian territories and what does that mean for the inhabitants of the temporarily occupied cities?

How many grains are there in the occupied south

The war reminded the whole world how much Ukrainian grain is worth. Yields in Ukraine are growing, although domestic consumption remains relatively stable. For example, in 2020, Ukrainian farmers harvested 65.4 million tons of cereals and legumes, of which 56.7 million tons were exported. According to the results of 2019-2020, Ukraine ranked second in the world in terms of sales of these products in foreign markets.

The EU will lift all trade restrictions on Ukraine. Who can benefit from this?

In 2021, a record harvest of 106 million tons was recorded. However, it was not possible to sell all the planned quantities abroad.

As a rule, farmers keep part of their products until spring, when their prices traditionally rise. But this year, such an approach was fatal for many of them.

The fact is that in peacetime about 60 percent of the total grain exports from our country passed through seaports. For more than 70 days, everything was blocked due to the blasting of the Black Sea and the occupation of port cities.

Due to the decline in exports from Ukraine and a number of other factors, grain prices in international markets have risen significantly. Thus, the price of a ton of wheat at the end of April was 50 percent higher than before the war in Ukraine. 20 million tons of grain remained in Ukrainian warehouses, of which 1.5 million tons - in the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

Thus, about half a billion dollars of Ukrainian grain remained in the temporarily occupied territories. And Russia has decided to take advantage of that.

Where supplies and equipment are disappearing

In early April, the "leader" of the occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, appointed by the Kremlin, unexpectedly announced a "stable supply" of the peninsula to products from the Kherson region. As it turned out, that means "stable" theft of products of Ukrainian farmers or buying several times cheaper.

"Russians are using early 20th century tactics to steal grain and export it from Ukraine," said Taras Visocki, Ukraine's first deputy minister of agricultural policy.

Reports of such cases are coming from all the temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine. For example, in the Luhansk region, the Russians have eliminated or destroyed three-year grain needs of the region’s residents. This is the only region of Ukraine in which sowing has not begun.

In the Zaporozhye region, grain is disappearing from the port: back in March, five fully or partially loaded transport ships were stationed in the port of Berdyansk, and at the end of the month they disappeared. According to locals, they were towed in an unknown direction by Russian tugs. Recently, the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov said that the farmers of Zaporozhye want to take 70 percent of their harvest.

In the Kherson region, the Russians robbed an elevator and exported 20,000 tons of grain to Russia. And in mid-April, the Russians appropriated land and other assets of Agro-Commonwealth and JP Commonwealth-South for 20,000 hectares in the region. The Ministry of Agrarian Policy said that the Russians had already stolen about 500,000 tons of grain - a third of the amount in the occupied territories.

Ukrainian food for the people of Crimea

Together with grain, the Russians take greenhouses and export vegetables to Russia. That happened with the Agrocoin plant in Energodar. The owner of the company, Andrij Čornji, said that armed people and former local MP Andrija Ševčik broke into the factory. The company was "nationalized" and the owner lost control of the shipments.

Laundry is not the place here. Can Russia squeeze the hryvnia out of the occupied territories?

Residents of the occupied Kherson region said that due to the severance of economic ties with the regions controlled by the legal authorities of Ukraine and limited logistics, they were forced to sell their crops for nothing.

The Russians bought cheaply bought goods together with the looted goods in the occupied Crimea in order to meet the needs of the local population. The so-called head of the administration of the city of Armjansk in Crimea, Vasily Telizhenko, praised the Kremlin agency TASS that prices on local markets have fallen, and the quality of products has increased due to supplies "from the other side".

Russians also export grain to Crimea. The scheme is similar - stealing or buying for nothing.

According to Alexander Hordienko, president of the Kherson Farmers' Association, farmers in Kakhovka district have been offered to sell grain for $ 100 a ton, which is 2.5 times less than domestic Ukrainian prices and four times less than world prices.

On April 28, RIA-Melitopol published a video of 15 grain trucks with trailers with the letters "Z" moving from mainland Ukraine to the peninsula.

The occupiers are exporting vegetables and grain to combat the effects of the country's food crisis. In just one year, world food prices have risen by 25 percent. It is expected to grow even more due to the war in Ukraine, the shortage of fertilizers and the wave of protectionism of producer countries.

In Russia, due to sanctions and the global deficit, food inflation in March was 18.75 percent. The panicked purchase of sugar a month ago showed that Russian society is very sensitive to rising food prices. Preventing price increases in stores is one of the main factors in the stability of the Putin regime.

German Agriculture Minister Jam Ozdemir also suggests that Russia is trying to eliminate Ukraine as its traditional competitor in the world grain market by exporting grain and destroying infrastructure.

Five main forecasts for the world and one for Russia: the main one from the IMF report on the consequences of the war

As Russians pump out food and hijack businesses, prices in the occupied territories are rising. Residents complain that the prices of basic foodstuffs have risen two to three times.

Thus, in Energodar stores, a kilogram of buckwheat now costs 90 hryvnias, rice 70, and 850 ml of sunflower oil 120. The supply from Crimea is unstable and insufficient to meet the needs of the inhabitants of the occupied areas.

In fact, the Russians are stealing food not only from uncontrolled territories, but from all over Ukraine. Every third Ukrainian tomato is grown in the Kherson region. The share of Kherson onions and cucumbers in all-Ukrainian production is 12 percent.

This means that the shortage of Ukrainian vegetables will be felt throughout the country, because trade with the occupied territories is not taking place. This will increase prices in stores and increase imports of agricultural products on the shelves.

Ukrainian ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova said that Russian actions in the occupied territories were a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

According to the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, Mikola Solski, it is too early to talk about lawsuits against Russia before international courts for food theft. Currently, only such cases are recorded in order to launch a mechanism for compensation and punishment of criminals in the future.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Ukraine provides food for 400 million people on the planet. Following Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports, some countries have lost a key grain supplier.

For example, in Lebanon and Egypt, more than 80 percent of cereals came from Ukraine and Russia. Reducing supplies has put these countries in a difficult position, especially in the context of the global food crisis.

Russia can take advantage of the crisis by trying to sell looted Ukrainian grain to endangered countries and make a profit. And such attempts are already happening.

An attempt by the Russian ship "Matros Pozinich" to export stolen Ukrainian grain to third countries is well known.

At the beginning of May, 27,000 tons of grain were loaded on this ship with geolocation (AIS) off in the occupied Crimea. The final destination was Egypt. But thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Matros Pozinich" did not reach the port of Alexandria. Stolen Ukrainian grain is now on its way to Lebanon and Syria. Ukraine is asking these countries to confiscate the ship as soon as it enters their ports.

Russian property and money are being sought and confiscated around the world. And what will Ukraine gain from that?

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is the only case when Russia tried to sell stolen goods from Ukraine abroad. However, Minister Solskyi suggests that all the grain currently leaving Sevastopol comes from the occupied south of Ukraine.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko noted that Ukraine is working to make every Russian company involved in illegal transactions with Ukrainian grain accountable for its actions.

In particular, it is about imposing sanctions against merchants, shipowners and other participants in criminal acts.