Report: 28% of Ukrainian fields are in the hands of giants with Zelensky’s signature

A country can be paralyzed either by military means, or… parts of it can be legally seized. In Ukraine, both are happening, thanks to the policy that Kiev chose long before the Russian forces invaded.

In two years of war, brave Westerners (European Union And United States of America) They offered assistance to Ukraine worth 205 billion euros and the number is still increasing. Officially, this money is intended to help Ukrainians regain territory occupied by Russia, which represents 20% of the country.

But according to a 2023 report by the award-winning American Oakland Institute (Oakland Institute), when the war is over and the Ukrainians return they will have no land left, as Kiev has sold it to a constellation of Western oligarchs, agencies and companies!

the Describes the report How Western aid has become dependent on a radical structural adjustment program, which includes austerity measures, cuts to social safety nets, and privatization of key sectors of the economy.

The key condition was the creation of a land market, which President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law in 2020, despite opposition from a majority of Ukrainians who feared it would exacerbate corruption in the agricultural sector and strengthen the control of powerful interests over it.

Unfortunately, the report's findings confirm these concerns, showing that creating a land market is likely to lead to increased concentration of agricultural land in the hands of oligarchs and major Western corporations.

According to the government, two Ukrainian planes were “stolen” by private interests.

The latter has already begun to expand its access to land. Food chain Kernel has announced plans to increase its acreage to 700,000 hectares – up from 506,000 hectares in 2021. Likewise, MHP, which currently controls 360,000 hectares of land, is looking to expand its holdings to 550,000 hectares.

MHP is also alleged to be circumventing restrictions on land purchases by requiring its employees to purchase land and lease it to the company.

Thus, by 2023, the total area of ​​land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals and large agricultural corporations will reach more than nine million hectares, exceeding 28% of the country's arable land.

The rest is used by more than eight million Ukrainian farmers.

The government's privatization agenda includes the controversial 2021 land reform as part of the structural adjustment program launched under the auspices of Western financial institutions after the installation of a pro-European government in Kiev in 2014.

With 33 million hectares of arable land, Ukraine has vast tracts of the most fertile agricultural land in the world.

The nightmare began in the early 1990s when privatizations and corrupt governments concentrated land in the hands of the few.

About 4.3 million hectares are under large-scale agriculture, most of which, 3 million hectares, is in the hands of only 12 large agro-industrial companies.

In addition, according to the government, about 5 million hectares – equivalent to the area of ​​both parts of Ukraine – have been “stolen” by private interests.

The report says the largest landowners are a mix of oligarchs and a variety of foreign interests – mostly from Europe and North America, including a US private equity fund and a Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund.

All but one of the top ten land companies are registered abroad, most of them in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg.

Even when these companies are controlled by an oligarch founder, some companies are going hand in hand with Western banks and investment funds to now control a significant portion of their shares.

The report identifies several prominent investors, including Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway's sovereign wealth fund.

Other institutional investors include prominent US pension funds such as the General Electric Pension Fund, the Dow Chemical Pension Fund and the Lockheed Martin Pension Plan, as well as famous university funds such as the University of Michigan Endowment and Harvard University, which invest in Ukrainian territory through NCH Capital – an equity fund. Especially based in the United States, which is 5^s The largest landowner in Ukraine!

Most of these companies are primarily indebted to Western financial institutions, most notably the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Together, these institutions have served as the main lenders to Ukrainian agricultural companies, providing approximately $1.7 billion to just six of Ukraine's largest landowners in recent years.

Other major lenders are a mix of mainly European and North American financial institutions, both public and private.

This debt not only gives creditors a financial stake in the operation of agricultural enterprises, but also provides the possibility of illicit gain in them.

Top private players destroying Ukrainian territory (Source: Ukrainian government)

According to the report, this was demonstrated by the debt restructuring of UkrLandFarming, one of Ukraine's largest landowners, which included creditors – from the United States, Canada and Denmark – which led to the layoffs of thousands of workers.

According to the findings of the Auckland Institute, this international financing directly benefits foreign capital, associated companies as shareholders or creditors, and of course oligarchs, many of whom face accusations of fraud and corruption.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Ukrainian farmers – who would go to the front to fight – were forced to work on minimal land and have limited access to finance, which is why they are now on the verge of poverty.

Evidence suggests that these farmers receive almost no support compared to agribusiness and oligarchies.

For example, the Partial Credit Guarantee Fund set up by the World Bank to support small farmers is only US$5.4 million, a tiny sum compared to the billions channeled to large agricultural enterprises.

Moreover, according to the report, by supporting big agribusiness, international financial institutions effectively support land concentration and an industrial model of agriculture based on the intensive use of synthetic inputs, fossil fuels, and large-scale monocultures. But they acknowledge that it is environmentally and socially destructive.

Instead, smallholder farmers in Ukraine have shown great resilience and potential to lead the expansion of a different production model based on agroecology, environmental sustainability and healthy food production.

It is Ukraine's small and medium-sized farmers who ensure the country's food security, while large agricultural enterprises are moving towards export markets.

In December 2022, a coalition of farmers, academics and NGOs called on the Ukrainian government to suspend the 2020 agrarian reform law and all land purchase transactions during the war and post-war period, “in order to ensure national security and land preservation.” The territorial integrity of the country in the period of war and post-war reconstruction.

“Today, thousands of rural and peasant boys and girls are fighting and dying in the war. They have lost everything. Procedures for the free sale and purchase of land are increasingly liberalized and made public. This really threatens the rights of Ukrainians to their land, for which they gave their lives,” explains Professor V. National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU) Olena Borodina.

At a time of enormous suffering and displacement, with countless lives lost and vast financial resources being spent to control Ukraine, this report raises significant concerns about the future of the country's land and food production, which is likely to become further entrenched and degraded. Controlled by oligarchs and foreign interests.

These concerns are exacerbated by Ukraine's staggering and growing external debt, which has shrunk to the detriment of the population's living conditions as a result of the measures required under the Structural Adjustment Programme.

Ukraine is now the world's third-largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund, and its debt is likely to bring additional pressure from creditors, bondholders and international financial institutions over how to conduct post-war reconstruction, which is estimated to cost $750 billion. It is happening.

These powerful actors have already made clear that they will use their influence to further privatize the country's public sector and liberalize agriculture.