Famine fears: Kyiv accuses Russia of stealing 400,000 tons of grain

Worry about famine
Kyiv accuses Russia of stealing 400,000 tons of grain

Ukraine accuses Russia of stealing and transporting grain on a massive scale from the occupied regions. If the stock is further reduced, there is a risk of famine in these areas. Things are also looking bad for exports abroad.

According to Kiev sources, Russia has had 400,000 tons of grain transported away from the occupied areas of Ukraine. That is about a third of the grain stocks in the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Taras Vysotskyi said on Ukrainian television.

About 1.3 million tons of grain were stored there before the war. These were intended for daily care, but also for sowing. “There were no strategic reserves,” said Wyssozkyj, according to information from Wednesday night. If grain stocks are further reduced, there is a risk of famine in these areas.

Reports of theft of agricultural equipment, crops and even building materials have been mounting in Ukraine in recent weeks. According to a Ukrainian businessman, Russian troops stole all the equipment from an agricultural machinery dealership in the occupied city of Melitopol and transported it to Chechnya. This was reported by the American news channel CNN a few days ago.

Removal of grain is reminiscent of actions in the Soviet Union

The forced removal of grain has historically been a painful issue between Ukrainians and Russians. When the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin forced the peasants into collective farms and confiscated grain by force, around four million people starved to death in the Ukraine in 1932/33. There were also deaths in southern Russia and Kazakhstan. Ukraine regards the artificially created famine, the so-called Holodomor, as Moscow-ordered genocide.

The theft of grain in the Cherson region, like the blockade of Ukrainian ports and the mining of shipping routes, also endangers global food security, according to a statement by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry last Friday. Around 400 million people are supplied with Ukrainian grain – mainly in North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

UN body: Millions of tons of grain blocked in Ukraine

“Currently almost 4.5 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukrainian ports and on ships and cannot be used,” said the director of the World Food Program of the United Nations (WFP) in Germany, Martin Frick, at the weekend. There are currently problems with the export of food, among other things, because ports and sea routes are blocked in the course of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Until the beginning of the war, Ukraine was one of the world’s most important producers of wheat and a major producer of corn. According to UN figures, for example, a good 30 million tons of maize and almost 25 million tons of wheat were harvested in the country in 2020. Many countries, for example in North Africa, are dependent on cheap wheat from Ukraine. Grain is also crucial for global food aid.

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