Kody Blois ascends to the House of Commons on Monday, November 29, 2021, in Ottawa. The speaker of the House of Commons, the Minister of Agriculture, says that the Russian troops are stealing from the grain stores of Ukraine and selling them on the international market through Syria. THE CANADIAN PRESS / Adrian Wyld Ukraine’s agriculture minister has told Ottawa that Russia is raiding its grain stores and secretly selling Ukrainian wheat on the international market. Mykola Solskyi told the agriculture committee of the House of Commons that 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat had been stolen by the Russians. Speaking to lawmakers via video link, he said Russia was mixing stolen Ukrainian wheat with Russian wheat and smuggling it in with fabricated documents, including through the Crimean port of Sevastopol. “Now they are transporting this wheat to Russia. They are mixing it with Russian grains and claiming that the origin of this wheat is Russia,” he said. The Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food said that Ukraine was monitoring cargo ships containing its wheat to Syria. “We managed to remove these ships from Egypt where they were originally headed, so they were diverted and went to Syria,” he said. “We have no allies in Syria.” Solski called on Canada to impose sanctions on shipowners who exported stolen grain, as well as those who buy and sell it. Ukraine’s silos contain grain destined for world markets, including the Middle East and Africa, but the war-torn country cannot export them through ports such as Odessa. Humanitarian organizations have warned that the blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia could lead to starvation in the developing world. “Due to the blockade of Ukraine’s seaports … 20 million tons of grain are not on the world market,” Solski said. Ukraine usually exports 5-6 million tonnes a month, he said, but in March it exported only 200,000 tonnes. Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of cereals in the world with many countries, including Lebanon and Bangladesh, relying on it for the supply of wheat, a staple food. The Ukrainian minister said part of its upcoming harvest could be ruined because the war-torn country has storage facilities for only 60 million tonnes of wheat, much less than usual. Many silos were already full due to the blockade of the ports by Russia. Some silos were destroyed by the Russians or were in Russian-controlled territory. He said Russia had also fired rockets at bridges and roads used to transport grain. The minister asked Canada to provide temporary storage facilities for its cereals to stop the rot of the next crop. At a news conference on Thursday, commission chairman Kody Blois said earlier that a Ukrainian lawmaker had reported that 13 percent of the fields had been bombed by Russians or contained unexploded ordnance. The Agriculture Committee is conducting a study on global food security and has heard information about the effects of the war on Ukraine’s ability to plant and export crops. Blois said the commission also heard on Monday that Russia was stealing Ukrainian wheat and selling it through Syria, a country allied with Vladimir Putin. Ukraine’s Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food told the commission that Ukrainian farmers in Russian-controlled areas were threatened with deprivation of their crops if they did not comply with Russian decrees. However, he said, in areas of the country controlled by Ukraine, its farmers “do not give up, they work hard every day.” Farmers are cultivating fields “just a few hundred meters from the site of the bombing.” The war has led to large numbers of Ukrainians being displaced without work, he explained. Ukraine has asked Canada to send seedlings for fruit trees that can be grown by people displaced from their homes and family farms.
