Page 15 - RusRPTJan23

Three large Ukrainian agricultural companies accused Agrocomplex of seizing their lands - HarvEast (40 thousand hectares), grain trader Nibulon (20 thousand hectares) and Agroton (100 thousand hectares). HarvEast CEO Dmitry Skornyakov said that in May, armed groups representing the interests of Agrocomplex and the local administration allegedly clashed over the control of his lands, The Bell reports.
WSJ, referring to Ukrainian intelligence, writes that the land seizures were carried out purposefully. Land assets belonging to the Ukrainian military or officials, as well as to persons who do not live in the regions, were the first to be seized. This happened during the visits of representatives of the authorities of the DPR and LPR, accompanied by armed persons, with the re-registration of documents for land and property. Some farmers were threatened with punishment if they did not stop cultivating the land, others were kept property, but in exchange for the surrender of 70% of the crop, the newspaper reports.
The publication established a connection with Agrocomplex in the case of Agroton. Director and owner of the company Yuri Zhuravlev said that in May he received a call from the Minister of Agriculture of the LPR. He, according to Zhuravlev, directly said that Agroton was not registered in the republic, and 100 thousand hectares and 350 thousand tons of grain and sunflower were transferred to Agrocomplex.
The land of "Agroton" was re-registered in the LPR for the Lugansk agro-industrial company under the leadership of Alexei Melnikov, a former district official of the Krasnodar Territory during the governorship of Tkachev. Soon, Melnikov met with the leadership of the LPR and the general director of Agrocomplex, after which the Russian company received a permit to work in the LPR, writes WSJ.
Zhuravlev says Agroton's managers, who did not want to work with the new management, were threatened with guns. Among the "expropriators" he named the mayor of the Starobelsky district of the LPR Valery Pakhnits (under US sanctions) and the deputy of Sevastopol, adviser to Pakhnits Pavel Kharlamov. The first denied the forcible seizure of land, the second admitted that Russian companies were involved in the process.
In July, harvesters on the fields of Agroton were already harvested by combines with the Agrocomplex logo, the WSJ claims, citing local workers. The publication did not find confirmation that 4 billion rubles were paid for the asset.
Why is it important? Agrocomplex is a holding with the most expensive land bank in Russia, although the third largest, unequivocally connected with the family of Alexander Tkachev, a person close to Vladimir Putin and since 2014 under EU and US sanctions. If we consider the data of the newspaper correct, his land this year has grown by a quarter at the expense of Ukraine.
It is hard to come up with a better argument for maintaining sanctions against Russian food. Especially considering another publication by the WSJ, which managed to link the export of grain by sea from the occupied territories of Ukraine with the largest Russian grain trader - Trading House "Rif" by Petr Khodykin.
15 RUSSIA Country Report January 2023 www.intellinews.com