Latest news with #LeonidPasechnik
The Independent
06-08-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Russia to sell crops from occupied areas of Ukraine
Luhansk, a Ukrainian region claimed by Russia since 2022, expects to double its wheat harvest this year and export some, local officials say. The rapid production rise reflects the regions' growing role in Russia's agriculture sector, showing their incorporation by the world's largest wheat exporter. Last year, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – Russia's 'new territories', internationally recognised as Ukrainian – supplied about 3 per cent of Russia's grain crop, the Agriculture Ministry said. Without that, a poor national harvest down 14 per cent due to bad weather in southern Russia would have been even worse. "This year we are planning to harvest about one million tons of grain, mostly wheat," Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Russian-installed administration of Luhansk, told reporters last month. "We planned to do the same last year but with very bad weather conditions, first spring frosts, the drought, we collected only half a million." At current market prices offered for free-on-board (FOB) delivery in Russia in August, this year's estimated 1 million ton crop would cost about $230 million. Before pro-Russian separatists took partial control of Luhansk, the region had produced 1.3 million tons of grain, mostly wheat, in 2013. Ukraine considers all grain produced in the four regions and Crimea - annexed by Russia in 2014 - to have been stolen by Moscow, and plans to ask its Western allies to sanction importers of it. Kyiv says its intelligence services have discovered the Ukrainian wheat is mixed with Russian at Black Sea ports and sent for export. "Taking this season into account, we estimate that Russia has stolen 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain since the start of the full-scale war," Ukraine's Deputy Economy Minister Taras Vysotskiy told Reuters. In one case, Ukraine called on the European Union to slap sanctions on Bangladesh over purchases of wheat it said came from Russian-controlled regions, but the EU has not done so. The European Commission did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Traders tell Reuters that it is impossible to track the origin of wheat once it is mixed. Russian officials have not commented on the legal status of grain, collected in the "new territories". Russia's official statistics agency, as well as leading consultancies, do not include the regions' crops in their reports though the Agriculture Ministry does, creating some discrepancies over their status. Farm visit On a visit to a farm in the Starobilsk district to mark the start of the harvesting campaign last month, Pasechnik hopped off a US-made harvester flying a Russian flag and shook hands with farmers. "May God grant us all victory and peace. This is what we should be focusing on, not war," he told them in a wheat field at the Sasha farm, less than 100 km (62 miles) from the front line. Luhansk, the only one of the four regions where Russia says it has full territorial control after three-and-a-half years of war, has increased the seeded area by 10 per cent this year as unused lands go back into circulation, the local officials said. The town of Starobilsk saw intense fighting in the early days of the war but has been under Russian control since March 2022. It is surrounded by fertile fields where farmers cultivate wheat, other grains and sunflowers. Moscow has allocated 8 billion roubles ($102 million) annually to support farmers in the "new territories". It also lifted an export tax on wheat produced in these regions. This makes the grain cheaper, facilitating exports. "Due to the duty-free regime, our products are more attractive to traders from other regions," Evgeny Sorokin, agriculture minister in the Russian-installed administration of the Luhansk region, told Reuters. Sorokin, appearing with Pasechnik at a ceremony for the start of harvesting, said that better margins due to the absence of the export tax have enabled farmers to purchase modern equipment, fertilizers, and fuel. Farmers and field workers at the event declined to speak to Reuters. The weather in Luhansk this year is better than in the neighbouring Rostov region of Russia, where drought threatens to destroy up to 30 per cent of crops, although Sorokin mentioned there was not enough moisture in the soil in Luhansk as well. "Two-thirds of the territory of the republic consists of highly productive arable black earth. The potential of the republic is large. What we are discussing today, one million tons of grain, is by no means the limit," Sorokin said. He estimated that the total arable area in Luhansk equals 1.2 million hectares, while 0.7 million hectares were seeded this year, suggesting that the region has the potential to quickly increase the seeded area. Russia has asked all landowners in the "new territories" to register with the Russian land registry before 2028. Many farmers fled the area with their fields now unused, while 20,000 hectares in Luhansk region were still strewn with landmines as of last December, according to Sorokin.
Reuters
06-08-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Russia boosts grain exports with crops from parts of Ukraine it controls
STAROBILSK DISTRICT, Russian-controlled Ukraine, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Luhansk, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russia has claimed as its own since going to war in 2022, expects to double its wheat harvest this year and send some for export, local officials say. The rapid rise in production reflects the regions' growing role in Russia's agriculture sector and shows how the world's largest wheat exporter is incorporating them into its strategy. Last year Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions - referred to by Russia as its "new territories" but still internationally recognised as Ukrainian - supplied about 3% of Russia's grain crop, the Agriculture Ministry said. Without that, a poor national harvest - down 14% due to bad weather in southern Russia - would have been even worse. "This year we are planning to harvest about one million tons of grain, mostly wheat," Leonid Pasechnik, head of the Russian-installed administration of Luhansk, told reporters including Reuters last month. "We planned to do the same last year but with very bad weather conditions, first spring frosts, the drought, we collected only half a million." At current market prices offered for free-on-board (FOB) delivery in Russia in August, this year's estimated 1 million ton crop would cost about $230 million. Before pro-Russian separatists took partial control of Luhansk, the region had produced 1.3 million tons of grain, mostly wheat, in 2013. Ukraine considers all grain produced in the four regions and Crimea - annexed by Russia in 2014 - to have been stolen by Moscow, and plans to ask its Western allies to sanction importers of it. Kyiv says its intelligence services have discovered the Ukrainian wheat is mixed with Russian at Black Sea ports and sent for export. "Taking this season into account, we estimate that Russia has stolen 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain since the start of the full-scale war," Ukraine's Deputy Economy Minister Taras Vysotskiy told Reuters. In one case, Ukraine called on the European Union to slap sanctions on Bangladesh over purchases of wheat it said came from Russian-controlled regions, but the EU has not done so. The European Commission did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Traders tell Reuters that it is impossible to track the origin of wheat once it is mixed. Russian officials have not commented on the legal status of grain, collected in the "new territories". Russia's official statistics agency, as well as leading consultancies, do not include the regions' crops in their reports though the Agriculture Ministry does, creating some discrepancies over their status. On a visit to a farm in the Starobilsk district to mark the start of the harvesting campaign last month, Pasechnik hopped off a U.S.-made harvester flying a Russian flag and shook hands with farmers. "May God grant us all victory and peace. This is what we should be focusing on, not war," he told them in a wheat field at the Sasha farm, less than 100 km (62 miles) from the front line. Luhansk, the only one of the four regions where Russia says it has full territorial control after three-and-a-half years of war, has increased the seeded area by 10% this year as unused lands go back into circulation, the local officials said. The town of Starobilsk saw intense fighting in the early days of the war but has been under Russian control since March 2022. It is surrounded by fertile fields where farmers cultivate wheat, other grains and sunflowers. Moscow has allocated 8 billion roubles ($102 million) annually to support farmers in the "new territories". It also lifted an export tax on wheat produced in these regions. This makes the grain cheaper, facilitating exports. "Due to the duty-free regime, our products are more attractive to traders from other regions," Evgeny Sorokin, agriculture minister in the Russian-installed administration of the Luhansk region, told Reuters. Sorokin, appearing with Pasechnik at a ceremony for the start of harvesting, said that better margins due to the absence of the export tax have enabled farmers to purchase modern equipment, fertilizers, and fuel. Farmers and field workers at the event declined to speak to Reuters. The weather in Luhansk this year is better than in the neighbouring Rostov region of Russia, where drought threatens to destroy up to 30% of crops, although Sorokin mentioned there was not enough moisture in the soil in Luhansk as well. "Two-thirds of the territory of the republic consists of highly productive arable black earth. The potential of the republic is large. What we are discussing today, one million tons of grain, is by no means the limit," Sorokin said. He estimated that the total arable area in Luhansk equals 1.2 million hectares, while 0.7 million hectares were seeded this year, suggesting that the region has the potential to quickly increase the seeded area. Russia has asked all landowners in the "new territories" to register with the Russian land registry before 2028. Many farmers fled the area with their fields now unused, while 20,000 hectares in Luhansk region were still strewn with landmines as of last December, according to Sorokin. ($1 = 78.4500 roubles)
Al Jazeera
06-08-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,259
Here is how things stand on Wednesday, August 6: Fighting Russian forces launched attacks on six settlements in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said, with three people killed and 10 injured in the village of Lyman and the town of Vovchansk. Russian forces also shelled a railway station in the town of Lozova, killing a duty mechanic. Four other railway workers were among the 10 people injured, Syniehubov said. Russian forces launched 431 air attacks on 16 settlements in Ukraine's Zaporizhia region, killing four people and wounding three others, Governor Ivan Fedorov said. A Ukrainian drone attack killed four employees of the water utility in the district of Svatovsky, in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, according to the region's Russia-installed governor, Leonid Pasechnik. The head of the region's health service, quoted by Russia's state-run TASS news agency, later said that a fifth worker wounded in the strike had died in hospital. TASS also reported that a 30-year-old man was killed and a 51-year-old woman was injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on a car near the Russian-occupied village of Nyzhnia Duvanka in the Svatovsky district on Monday. Ukraine's military intelligence claimed that Ukrainian forces killed 334 Russian troops and wounded more than 550, in a failed attack on Ukraine's Sumy region. Al Jazeera was not able to verify the report. Ukraine's presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram that Kyiv has found components from India in Russian drones used for attacks on Ukraine. Al Jazeera could not independently verify the information. Military aid Sweden, Norway and Denmark will together contribute about 5 billion Norwegian crowns ($486.16m) to buy US weapons for Ukraine, the Norwegian government said in a statement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the promised funding, saying that Ukraine had secured an 'additional $500 million from our friends in Northern Europe: Sweden, Norway, and Denmark' for US weapons. The US Department of State approved the potential sale of repair and sustainment support for M777 howitzer artillery guns, and transportation and consolidation services to Ukraine from BAE Systems and other United States contractors for an estimated total of $203.5m, the Pentagon said. Regional security The German air force will station five Eurofighter combat aircraft in Poland for several weeks, in response to a Polish request, an air force spokesman told Germany's DPA news agency. The Kyiv Independent news outlet reported that the move was a deterrent ahead of joint Russian-Belarusian military drills. Lithuania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has written to the NATO military alliance asking it to help strengthen its air defences, after two military drones crossed into its territory from Belarus last month. Ceasefire and sanctions Zelenskyy said he had a 'productive conversation' with US President Donald Trump, 'with the key focus of course being ending the war'. Trump told CNBC news that declining energy prices could pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt Moscow's war in Ukraine. 'If energy goes down enough, Putin is going to stop killing people,' Trump said. 'If you get energy down, another $10 a barrel, he's going to have no choice because his economy stinks.'
Reuters
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Moscow-appointed officials say five dead in Ukrainian attack on Russian-held Luhansk region
Aug 5 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian attack on municipal workers in Russian-held Luhansk region killed five people on Tuesday, Russia-appointed officials in the region said. Leonid Pasechnik, the Russia-appointed head of the region, wrote on Telegram that four workers trying to maintain water supplies in the city of Svatove had been killed in the strike. The head of the region's health service, quoted by Russia's state-run TASS news agency, later said a worker wounded in the strike had died in hospital. Luhansk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in 2022 -- along with Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia -- seven months after launching its full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour. Moscow said in June it had secured control over the entirety of Luhansk region. It holds parts of the other three.
Straits Times
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Moscow-appointed officials say five dead in Ukrainian attack on Russian-held Luhansk region
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox A Ukrainian attack on municipal workers in Russian-held Luhansk region killed five people on Tuesday, Russia-appointed officials in the region said. Leonid Pasechnik, the Russia-appointed head of the region, wrote on Telegram that four workers trying to maintain water supplies in the city of Svatove had been killed in the strike. The head of the region's health service, quoted by Russia's state-run TASS news agency, later said a worker wounded in the strike had died in hospital. Luhansk is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in 2022 -- along with Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia -- seven months after launching its full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour. Moscow said in June it had secured control over the entirety of Luhansk region. It holds parts of the other three. REUTERS
