Russia openly admits systematic grain theft
“It smokes, it thunders, it can actually hit anywhere”
Russia is advancing further and further in the Donbass. “The troops are regrouping and a new major offensive is expected soon,” reports WELT reporter Ibrahim Naber from Bachmut.
For months there have been increasing indications that Russia is stealing and exporting grain from Ukraine. Now a Russian official has confirmed it. According to Kyiv sources, Russia is firing rockets at Ukraine from the Caspian Sea region. An overview.
AAt first it was just rumours, but then the signs became clearer – now Russia openly admits that it is systematically stealing Ukraine’s grain. The head of the Russian military administration in Zaporizhia, Yevgeny Balizki, announced on his Telegram channel on Saturday that large quantities of grain had been brought out of the country in the past few weeks. “More than 100 wagons have already been dispatched, and another contract for 150,000 tons has been signed with a grain trader,” Balizki wrote. Ukraine has been accusing Russia of stealing grain for months.
Balizki did not specify where the grain will be taken. However, the grain can only be transported by rail to Russia or to the Crimea peninsula, which Russia has annexed since 2014. According to Ukrainian sources, around 70 tons of grain can be transported in a typical local railway wagon. According to Balizki, in addition to rail transport, shipping by sea is also planned. “About 100,000 tons will be exported through the seaport of Berdyansk,” he announced.
After the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian army quickly conquered the southern part of the Zaporizhia region with the port of Berdyansk on the Azov Sea located there. However, the advance to the north was halted, so that the regional capital of Zaporizhia itself remains under Kiev control.
Loading grain onto a ship in Ukraine. According to Russia, it illegally exports grain from occupied territories
Source: REUTERS
Before the war, Ukraine was one of the largest grain exporters in the world. According to information from Kyiv, more than 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain are stuck in the Black Sea as a result of the Russian attack and the naval blockade. Ukraine is only gradually succeeding in establishing alternative export routes. The uncertainties caused by the war have made many foods more expensive worldwide. At the same time, according to Ukrainian sources, Russia is robbing grain stocks in the occupied territories. Moscow denies this. According to images from the US satellite operator Maxar, Russian ships have shipped Ukrainian grain to Syria, among other places.
Numerous cases of grain theft are now well documented. So did the Ukrainian Project SeaKrime 21 trips by freighters to Syria, Turkey and the Russian port of Kavkaz. In Kawkaz, the ships were partly transshipped on the open sea in order to disguise the origin of the grain from the Crimea.
Turkey in particular is repeatedly suspected of buying illegally exported grain from Russia. That’s what they reported Reuters news agency At the beginning of July, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the government in Ankara several times in June, demanding that the suspicious movements of grain freighters be investigated.
The current situation in Ukraine
Source: Infographic WORLD
Meanwhile, fighting in Donbass is flaring up again after a long break. After capturing the Luhansk region, Russia next wants to wrest the Donetsk region from complete Ukrainian control. Like the independent US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) citing data from the US space agency Nasa, the number of “heat events” near the front in eastern Ukraine has increased again in recent days.
This confirms that Russia has resumed shelling Ukrainian positions with artillery. Shortly before, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow had announced that it wanted to expand the attacks against the neighboring country almost five months after the invasion.
This coincides with reports by the Ukrainian Air Force of enemy missiles being fired at long range from the Caspian Sea region. Four out of a total of six missiles were intercepted on Saturday over the Dnipro areas in the east and Zaporizhia in the south, the Ukrainian air force said. Two more had hit agricultural land in the central Ukrainian region of Cherkassy. The damage is still being investigated.
In addition to Russia, the South Caucasus Republic of Azerbaijan and Central Asian Kazakhstan also border the Caspian Sea. According to the Ukrainian account, long-range bombers of the Tupolev Tu-95 type were used in the shelling. There was initially no confirmation from Moscow.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his intention to recapture Russian-held areas of his country. “We have already managed to liberate part of the territory occupied after February 24,” Zelenskyj said in his daily video speech on Sunday night. “We will gradually liberate other regions of our country that are currently occupied.”
Barely five months after the start of the war, Ukraine recently launched counter-offensives in the south and a few days ago shelled a Russian ammunition depot in the Cherson region. Weapons delivered from the West are also to be used in the reconquest of occupied areas. Zelenskyy also accused Russia of deliberately using fake news as a weapon in the war against his country.
The Ukrainians need “a kind of emotional sovereignty” in order not to play this “information game”, he said. Untruths, for example about allegedly prepared rocket attacks, only had one purpose: “to supplement the rocket and artillery terror against our state with information terror”.