The Russians make it “legal” to steal Ukrainian grain from the temporarily occupied territories, and in the liberated territories of Ukraine they make the life of the civilian population intolerable

The Russians are trying to integrate the temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine under Russian legislation, reports the Center of National Resistance: “Russian communication channels have launched a new information campaign about the alleged transition of regions in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine under Russian legislation. In this way, the occupiers are pursuing two key goals.”

The first goal: to impose on the citizens of the temporarily occupied territories that the Russian Federation is in these lands for a long time and therefore is adjusting all activities in the processes.

“However, in practice, residents of the temporarily occupied territories resist the fake changes. Even the “new legislation” cannot work due to the lack of personnel and collaborators in the temporarily occupied territories, who should implement them. Also, the local population is not the first to encounter “legislative “changes” of the occupiers. Russians repeatedly tried to introduce only their ruble into circulation in 2022, but the local population still prefers the hryvnia. Also, Russians constantly postpone the deadlines for the transition to the legislation of the Russian Federation for the work of small and medium-sized businesses.

Registers, which were supposed to be filled by the fall of 2022, due to the opposition of local businesses, still do not exist, and the Russians have set a new deadline – until the end of 2023,” the Center for Resistance noted.

The second goal: the de facto occupiers want to divide the markets in the temporarily occupied territories and place curators from the Russian authorities everywhere.

“After all, one of the key processes in the transition to Russian standards is the reorientation of the agricultural sector in the temporarily occupied territories to the Russian market. In fact, the process of looting (export of Ukrainian grain) will be “legalized” by the Russians. And curators will have sole control over the theft of agricultural goods from the temporarily occupied territories.

A similar story works with the financing of construction works in the temporarily occupied territories. The chief curator of financing works in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine is the Deputy Head of the Government of the Russian Federation for Construction Affairs, Marat Khusnulin, who manually decides who will launder budget funds for supposedly social projects. Therefore, the so-called integration of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine under the legislation of the Russian Federation is a common derision of influences for the embezzlement of funds,” the message reads.

Either to risk life or to suffer from hunger, the work of farmers in the mined fields of the Kherson region

Russian troops deliberately mine the fields of Ukrainian farmers in order to harm agricultural producers and the agricultural sector of Ukraine.

Farmer O. Gordienko from the Kherson region, who is a member of the regional council and the head of the Farmers’ Association of the Kherson region, tells about this.

He reports that he has to carefully investigate wheat fields with a metal detector, which not so long ago served as a position for Russian tanks, where the farmer managed to find tank mines, hundreds of mines laid out in a checkerboard pattern across the field, posing a deadly danger before the spring planting season.

Producing watermelons, barley, sunflower oil and corn, the fertile lands of Ukraine have supported the lives of many generations, supplied vast amounts of food to the world, and could now provide a desperately needed lifeline for the country.

And although the Russian troops that once occupied these positions in southern Ukraine have long since left, they have left behind a colossal amount of explosives, some of which are abandoned and others set as traps.

Gordienko, who grows wheat and rapeseed on 600 hectares in Kherson, says that it is not yet known how the fields will be demined.

The armed forces of Ukraine managed to push Russian troops out of most of the Kherson region in the fall of 2022, but recovery after eight months of occupation is slow because the occupiers still control the territory east of the Dnieper and a large part of the recently liberated lands remains within the reach of the Russian artillery

According to HALO Trust, a global demining organization, mines and explosives in Ukraine could contaminate an area the size of Great Britain.

At the same time, this problem is not as acute in any region as in the Kherson region, where Russian troops left explosives almost everywhere after the Ukrainian troops pushed them back from there in the fall.

Kherson region is a region that can be called one of the agricultural granaries of Ukraine. Before the war, the south of Ukraine was famous as a large producer of grain and sunflower oil. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, Kherson produced more vegetables by volume than any other Ukrainian region, according to government statistics.

A maritime corridor agreed by the United Nations last year to allow already-harvested Ukrainian grain to bypass the Russian blockade and travel abroad has partially eased the global food crisis caused by the war. The agreement expires on March 18, but even if it is extended, Ukrainian farmers must be able to plant and harvest grain again to keep supplies going.

Experts say that it is too early to estimate how long it will take to remove all mines from the Kherson region. Much of the liberated territory remains within range of Russian artillery and comes under daily fire, including from cluster munitions that can scatter unexploded fragments over a large area.

As a result of shelling with cluster munitions, an area of ​​20 hectares may be damaged.

Meanwhile, farmers like O. Gordienko are carefully inspecting their land. Using a hand-held metal detector, as well as a larger device attached to the tractor, he has already found 1,500 mines, although he believes there may be hundreds more.

Gordienko says that with the arrival of the Russians, he burned about 200 hectares of his crops so that they would not fall into their hands. He added that he doesn’t expect to be able to start planting until the fall, and even then it will only be on that part of his land that remains free of explosives.

Since the start of the full-scale war with Russia, around 200 civilians have been killed in accidental landmine accidents, according to open-source data compiled by HALO, although this figure is a significant underestimate, and hundreds more have been injured.

At a grain warehouse in the Kherson region owned by the Nibulon company, one of the country’s largest exporters of agricultural products, not a single building was left unscathed after Russian troops marched through the area. Even the metal water tower was blown up.

In the year since the Russian invasion, Nibulon has lost about half a billion dollars worth of equipment and crops, a company spokeswoman said.

Farmers are impatient about the pace of demining, so Nibulon, like O. Gordyneko, independently began conducting their own survey of mines and unexploded ammunition in their fields and is considering the possibility of training their own workers to conduct demining operations, says Andriy Volyk, deputy director, who is responsible for the security of the company. He believes it could take years.