Russian invaders ship out stolen Ukrainian grain via Mariupol and Crimea
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Ports in Russian-occupied Crimea and a railway connection in the destroyed city of Mariupol are being heavily used by Russia to export grain harvested in the Russian-occupied parts of the country, Ukraine’s National Resistance Center (NRC) reported on Aug. 5.
"The occupiers are using
the port infrastructure of Crimea to export looted grain from the temporarily
occupied territories of (Ukraine’s)
Kherson and Zaporizhzhya (oblasts)," the NRC, a state civil defense organization,
said in a report.
"The looted Ukrainian grain is probably sent to African
markets."
Taking advantage of their military occupation of Ukraine,
the Russian invaders
buy agricultural goods from Ukrainian farmers for
practically nothing, ignoring market prices, the NRC said.
"All farmers in the
occupied regions have to sell wheat to the enemy at a fixed price, which is
many times lower than the market price," the message reads.
It appears the effective theft of crops from
Ukrainian farmers in the occupied part of the country is part of a broader
strategy by Russia to undermine Ukraine’s profitable agricultural sector.
Russia on July 17 abandoned a deal brokered by
the UN and Turkey last year that allowed Ukraine to export its grain via three
of its Black Sea ports. Moscow declared that any ships headed for Ukrainian
ports would be regarded as possibly carrying weapons and could be attacked.
It then launched a bombing campaign to destroy Ukraine port infrastructure and grain terminals in order to disrupt Ukrainian
grain exports by sea.
Ukraine in turn declared on July 20 that allships travelling to Russian-controlled Black Sea ports could be targeted forattack.
Kyiv appeared to make good on that threat on
Aug. 4, when it attacked and badly damaged a Russian warship with a sea drone
near the port of Novorossiysk, and on Aug. 5, when it used another drone to
attack a Russian oil tanker near the Kerch Strait, to the east of Ukraine’s
Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
The attack on the tanker, which was being used
by the Russians to supply fuel to it military in both Syria and Ukraine, took
place in Ukrainian territorial waters, according to Ukraine’s SBU security
service, which said it carried out both attacks with the Ukrainian Navy.
The Russian tanker, the SIG, is under sanction
by the United States for its use as a support vessel for the Russian military.
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