A new investigation exposes how Ukrainian collaborators are helping the Russian government seize grain from Ukraine’s occupied territories.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Centre for Information Resilience has been monitoring the disruption of food production and exports by the Russian military across the territory of Ukraine.
Our new investigation examines the alleged theft and appropriation of strategic crops in Ukrainian territory, temporarily occupied by Russian and Russia-controlled forces after the full-scale invasion. The report identifies extractive activities at high-interest locations that have fallen under the complete or partial control of the Russia-controlled occupying authorities in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.
Open-source data verified by CIR can be categorised as applying to one of the following four themes:
• Seizure of harvested grain;
• Appropriation of agricultural land;
• Transport of illicit grain (overland);
• Transport of illicit grain (maritime).
Locations analysed in the report as demonstrating indicators of extractive activities: Starobilsk (Luhansk oblast), Svatove (Luhansk oblast), Berdiansk (Zaporizhzhia oblast), Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia oblast), Kamianka-Dniprovska (Zaporizhzhia oblast).
Indicators of widespread logistical operations by rail, road, and sea relating to the extraction of grain have been detected at sites across the newly occupied areas of Ukraine.
In this report, CIR ties these logistical efforts, recorded on social media and by international journalists, to specific enterprises associated with occupying authorities and, by extension, the Russian state. These enterprises, and the occupying authorities that engage them, have seized the means of grain storage and export to a point where they essentially control the grain trade in the areas in which they operate.
To read the full report, download the PDF: