Russia steals 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain
Photo: Moscow stole 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain (Getty Images)
Ukraine estimates that Moscow has stolen 15 million tons of grain since 2022. It is mixed with Russian grain and exported, according to Reuters.
Ukraine believes that all grain produced in four regions and Crimea, occupied by Russia in 2014, was stolen by Moscow, and plans to ask its Western allies to impose sanctions against importers of this grain.
Kyiv claims that its intelligence services have discovered that Ukrainian wheat is being mixed with Russian wheat in Black Sea ports and exported.
"Taking this season into account, we estimate that Russia has stolen 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain since the start of the full-scale war," Ukrainian Deputy Economy Minister Taras Vysotskyi tells Reuters.
Ukraine has already called on the European Union to impose sanctions on Bangladesh for purchasing wheat from Russian-occupied regions, but the EU has not done so.
The European Commission did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Traders told Reuters that it is impossible to trace the origin of wheat after it has been mixed.
Grain from occupied Ukrainian regions
According to the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, last year, the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, which Russia calls its “new territories” but which are still internationally recognized as Ukrainian, supplied about 3% of Russia's grain harvest.
Without this, the country's meager harvest — down 14% due to bad weather in southern Russia — would have been even worse.
Russian officials have not commented on the legal status of grain harvested in the “new territories.” Rosstat, as well as leading consulting companies, do not include the harvest in these regions in their reports, unlike the Ministry of Agriculture.
In the occupied Luhansk region, they plan to harvest about 1 million tons of grain, mainly wheat, and send part of the harvest for export. Last year, only 0.5 million tons were harvested. Before the occupation, in 2013, the region produced 1.3 million tons of grain, mainly wheat.
The Security Service of Ukraine announced that it suspects Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev of organizing the mass theft of grain from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
Moscow is exporting Ukrainian grain from the occupied territories to Iran.
