Russia has stolen 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain since the start of the full-scale war

Ukraine estimates the amount of grain stolen by Moscow since February 24, 2022, at 15 million tons. It is mixed with Russian grain and exported.

Ukraine believes that all the grain produced in four regions and Crimea, which Russia occupied in 2014, was stolen by Moscow, and plans to ask its Western allies to impose sanctions on importers of the grain.

Kyiv says its intelligence services have discovered that Ukrainian wheat is being mixed with Russian wheat at Black Sea ports and sent for export.

“Taking into account this season, we estimate that since the start of the full-scale war, Russia has stolen 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain,” Ukraine’s Deputy Economy Minister Taras Vysotsky told Reuters.

Ukraine has already called on the European Union to impose sanctions on Bangladesh over its purchases of wheat from Russian-occupied regions, but the EU has not done so.

The European Commission did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Traders told Reuters that it is impossible to trace the origin of the wheat once it has been mixed.

According to the Russian Agriculture Ministry, last year the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, which Russia calls its “new territories” but are still internationally recognized as Ukrainian, supplied about 3% of its grain harvest to Russia.

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 the grain harvested in the “new territories.” Rosstat, as well as leading consulting companies, do not include the harvest in the 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.