Russia has stolen at least 400,000 tons of Ukrainian grain

Since the beginning of the large-scale invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory, Russia has illegally exported at least 400,000 tons of grain from Ukraine, Taras Vysotsky, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food of Ukraine commented on June 25.

He noted that according to elevator registers, at the beginning of the occupation, there were about one and a half million tons of grain in occupied Ukrainian territories.

“We received information from those Ukrainian territories about the fact of illegal export. If we add all these cases, then that’s about 400,000 tons,” Vysotsky said.

He added that according to the Kyiv School of Economics, the losses sustained by Ukrainian agriculture from the full-scale invasion already total $4.3 billion.

“Russia is intentionally destroying the agricultural infrastructure,” Vysotsky noted, recalling that in June in Mykolaiv, Russian troops destroyed the second largest grain terminal in Ukraine.

Russian occupiers export Ukrainian grain first by trucks from temporarily occupied territories of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia Regions to Crimea and then by ship.

The occupation administration does not hide the illegal sale of Ukrainian grain and considers it their own.