Seized Fields, Stolen Grain: How Russia Exploits Agriculture in Occupied Southern Ukraine

Amid the chaos of the occupation, some bottles were taken and sold by people from the surrounding area. The winery itself was looted and vandalised: equipment disappeared, and Russian soldiers later used its large metal tanks as shooting targets.

The destruction of the winery was one example of a much broader process affecting agricultural businesses across the occupied Azov region.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s northern Azov Sea coast was a major agricultural and export region. Farms, grain elevators, seed plants and transport networks were connected to the ports of Mariupol and Berdiansk, which provided access to international markets.

Under occupation, this system did not physically disappear. Fields remained fields, warehouses remained warehouses, and ports remained ports. But the links between them were severed, along with the economic chains. Ukrainian owners and communities lost the ability to decide what to do with land, crops, machinery, and enterprises. Russia is not restoring the pre-war agricultural system. It is replacing Ukrainian ownership and control with an occupation-driven system designed to serve the Russian economy. The disruption of this system has consequences far beyond Ukraine, especially for import-dependent countries like Kenya.

Ukrainian land and harvests fall under Russian control

After Russia seized the territories, Ukrainian companies remained owners on paper but lost access to fields, warehouses, machinery, seed stocks, irrigation systems, and harvested grain.

One example is HarvEast. After the full-scale invasion, the company lost control of 95,000 hectares near Mariupol. In the occupied territory, it left behind a seed plant, 2,500 pieces of machinery, irrigation systems, 119 hectares of walnut orchards, and almost 52,000 tonnes of grain from the 2021 harvest.

In autumn 2021, HarvEast sowed 51,000 hectares of winter crops in Donetsk Oblast. According to Tetiana Alaverdova, a company representative, the occupiers later harvested these crops.

This was more than lost property: occupation severed the link between the infrastructure and the people who built and operated it.

For the Vyna Pryazovia winery mentioned at the beginning, the consequences were even more devastating: its vines died.

Its owner, Volodymyr Babych, said that in 2022 the young vines - 32,000 grape bushes - had reached peak productivity, but the grapes were never harvested. According to Babych, wine and equipment were taken during the first months of the occupation. 

“The vine is dying. It suffers during hostilities. It gets sick without care. The vine, like all of us, is waiting for Ukraine to return,” Babych said.

Businesses are being forced into the Russian economic system

Russian authorities require Ukrainian agricultural businesses to re-register under Russian law, cooperate with the occupation administrations, pay taxes into the Russian system, and obtain Russian-issued documents. Those that refuse risk losing access to their property.

Ukrainian investigators found that companies linked to Alexander Tkachev, a former Russian agriculture minister and major agribusiness owner, had taken control of agricultural enterprises owned by Ukrainians in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast.

For local business owners, this means losing control of their companies, land, harvests, and profits.

How Ukrainian grain becomes “Russian”

For grain from occupied territory to reach foreign markets, Russia needs the entire supply chain: a grain elevator, a road, a port, a vessel, intermediaries and documentation. At each stage, the grain’s Ukrainian origin becomes harder to trace.

In 2022, Russia’s occupation administration in Zaporizhzhia created a grain-trading entity known as the State Grain Operator. It incorporated seized storage facilities and other agricultural assets and bought grain from local farmers at prices set under occupation.

The chain then leads to the ports. Before the war, Mariupol and Berdiansk were part of Ukraine's port economy. Russia now uses them as an outlet for grain from seized territories.

According to Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s state agricultural and veterinary regulator, twelve vessels carrying wheat left the Russian-occupied port of Mariupol between 1 January and 8 June 2026. Russian authorities reported inspecting 88,800 tonnes of grain. 

A similar route can be seen in Berdiansk. In May 2026, according to Ukrainian Shipping Magazine, the Russian vessel Perun loaded 4,332.06 tonnes of wheat in occupied Berdiansk, then called at Russia’s Temryuk port and headed to Tekirdağ in Turkey.

The port is not just where grain is loaded. It is the stage after which the cargo becomes less transparent. After paperwork, grain from occupied territory can move on as an ordinary export shipment.

For a foreign buyer, this may look like Russian wheat. But its journey may have begun on a Ukrainian field, passed through a seized elevator or port, and only then received trade documents.

In a Wall Street Journal investigation, this scheme is described not as isolated theft, but as a shadow market Russia built after occupation. Since 2022, the publication writes, Russia and related structures have shipped at least 4 million tonnes of grain and other agricultural products from occupied Ukraine to international markets, earning about $800 million. The total value of grain taken from occupied territories may reach $6.4 billion.

WSJ also notes that this market relies on intermediaries, shell companies, foreign buyers, and documents that obscure the cargo’s origin. Grain from occupied Ukrainian territories was sold or moved through structures linked to Iran, Syria, Russian shipbuilding, and other parts of Moscow’s war economy.

Seized grain travels a long way from a Ukrainian field to a buyer. At every stage the route becomes less transparent, and the connection with the land where it was grown is gradually erased.

This is how Russia turns military occupation into economic control. For many countries across the Global South, particularly those heavily dependent on food imports, the consequences are not as distant as the geography might suggest. The seizure of Ukrainian farms and ports, the disruption of Black Sea trade, and the concealment of grain’s origin make the international market less transparent and less stable. These pressures can eventually be reflected in the price of flour and bread thousands of kilometres from the occupied Ukrainian fields where the grain was grown.