Page 18 - UKRRptAug22

Livestock is a bit better, as Russia is self-sufficient in beef and covers 70-75% of its own needs, but breeding stock remains heavily dependent on imports, as do animal medicines.
The story is the same with agricultural machinery. In the 70s the Soviet government mechanised agriculture and the tractor became the symbol of the Soviet wonderland. Many of those tractor plants are still going today, such as the famous tractor plant in Minsk, but three quarters of machinery was imported last year, mostly from Germany and the Netherlands.
The Kremlin has already won concessions to ease some of these sanctions, but it will continue to play games with grain exports to maintain the pressure while it lobbies to have more of the sanctions lifted.
“Moscow may decide at any moment to withdraw unilaterally from the agreement, despite all the benefits for Russian farmers and the economy. During the past five months, President Vladimir Putin has made it clear time and time again that economic logic is of little use in trying to predict his actions,” concludes Prokopenko.
2.6 Politics - misc
The EU has agreed on the seventh package of sanctions against the Russian Federation on July 19. At a meeting on Monday, EU foreign ministers agreed on a new sanctions package against Russia, stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Peter Szijártó. The new sanctions package mainly consists of clarifications of previous restrictions. In addition, it includes an embargo on gold imports from Russia, increased regulation of trade in dual-use goods, and further restrictions on public procurement and financial services. At the same time, Siyarto emphasized that the new package does not contain sanctions against energy imports from Russia and Gazprombank. "We have made it very clear: if Gazprombank is included in the sanctions list, Hungary will not be able to support it because there are no restrictions on the transportation of energy carriers," Szijarto added.
Ukraine, Russia sign separate agreements with Turkey, UN on grain passage through Black Sea. The agreements envision the use of three Ukrainian ports - Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhne - to export grain under the supervision of Ukraine, the UN, and Turkey. The agreement doesn't envision a Russian presence in these ports nor those it allows Russia to escort Ukrainian grain out of the country.
Russia captured Chornobyl with the help of long-embedded secret agents. A Reuters investigation discovered that Russia sent its agents to Ukraine long before the invasion to establish contacts with officials and prepare the ground for a takeover. According to Reuters, the Kremlin believed these agents would help Russia capture Ukraine effortlessly within a couple of days. “Apart from the external enemy, we unfortunately have an internal enemy, and this enemy is no less dangerous,” the secretary of National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said in an interview with Reuters.
18 UKRAINE Country Report XXXX 2018 www.intellinews.com