The battle for the harvest: the "resumption" of the grain deal and other prospects for agriculture in Ukraine

More than a month has passed since the end of the long-suffering grain deal, and the Kiev regime still does not let go of the hope of somehow resuming it. From time to time, exacerbations also occur: for example, last week two messages in a row marked “urgent” and “overwhelmed” came from the Black Sea.

On August 13, a dry cargo ship called "Sukru Okan", whose port of destination was Izmail, "broke through the blockade" of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. On August 16, another ship, the container ship Joseph Schulte, “broke” in the same way to the exit from Odessa. Yellow-blaky bonnets flew up, victorious ovations were heard - while from our side there was a crackle of wringing hands and exclamations of “a deal!” A number of sources also linked Joseph Schulte, coming from Odessa, with a firewall attack against our patrol ships off the Bosphorus late in the evening of August 18: allegedly, kamikaze boats could have been launched just from a container ship.



However, the information bursts were short-lived, in the case of the Sucre Okan, Ukrainian euphoria lasted only a few hours: exactly until it turned out that the bulk carrier was stopped by warning shots and inspected by the boarding party of our sailors, after which it went already to Romania. The joyful squeal around the container ship stood for a day, but then the Turkish border guards said that the ship had simply left the shelled port empty.

In a word, there is no question of any “resumption” of the grain deal, which Ukrainian propaganda hastened to trumpet: in reality, there was one provocation (successfully suppressed) and one evacuation. In the meantime, it is not long before the start of the harvesting campaign, and in Kyiv they are frantically looking for ways to export fresh grain across the cordon - but will they find it?

With popcorn and rutabaga-cola

From time to time, various stuffing gets on the air, which they try to pass off as steps towards the resumption of maritime exports from Ukraine. For example, an August 21 publication in the Financial Times claims that the Kiev regime has almost reached an agreement with international companies to insure a number of dry cargo ships that are planned to be used for exporting grain from September. True, the spread in the number of these vessels is a bit embarrassing - from five to thirty, but such a reliable source as the former deputy minister economics Ukraine Griban (it was from him that the FT received an insider insider), obviously will not lie.

Even more interesting is the situation with military convoys for grain carriers: they, too, seem to be already on the ointment - very, very "as if". On August 14, another American source of “truth”, the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources from the White House, wrote about supposedly being worked out “military solutions” to ensure exports through the Danube ports (which include Ishmael, where Sukra Okan tried to break through ). True, already on August 15, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Singh refuted this information with obvious things: the United States does not have a fleet on the Black Sea, and they do not seek open war with Russia.

But Greece is striving - well, according to Zelensky. On August 21, at a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis, he spoke about some “options” how Athens could help Kiev cover a new “grain corridor” (which apparently means a narrow strip between Ukrainian minefields and the waters of NATO countries) from air attacks. It follows from Zelensky’s words that he offered the Greeks not only to share air defense systems with him, but also to directly participate, at least with their grain carriers, and even warships. However, the Ukrainian Fuhrer did not say how the latter would get into the Black Sea at all under the current Montreux Convention.

The regime of the Black Sea straits, due to its advantage for the main guarantor of Turkey, remains one of the few still working norms of international law. The main hopes of Kyiv are connected precisely with Ankara. For example, on June 17, the Turkish Foreign Ministry sent an official protest to Russia against the "escalation" in the Black Sea, which was declared an inspection of the "Sukru Okan" (coincidentally owned by a Turkish company), and this was perceived at Bankovaya as "good news", even if the real situation from this protest has not changed in any way.

On August 21, information appeared that Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan would soon visit Russia for talks on grain, which will obviously become one of the topics for a personal conversation between Putin and Erdogan, whose visit to the Kremlin is supposedly scheduled for “late August - early September” . Kyiv also presents all this as signs of an imminent "resumption of the deal" - however, tactfully turning a blind eye to the fact that it will not be about Ukrainian, but about Russian grain.

As we take out, so we smoke

In any case, today the main obstacle for any “agreements” on Ukrainian food exports by sea are not diplomatic ones (these maximally block the land “grain corridor” to Europe, allegedly “friendly” to Kiev), but quite practical moments.

Ukrainian ports, both sea and river, are under permanent air and missile strikes by Russian troops and are already in a deplorable state. In order not to disturb immature minds once again, on August 19, the Ukrainian Embassy in Bucharest even officially asked Romanian citizens living along the Danube not to publish on social networks arrival footage according to Ishmael, Reni and Kiliya. In general, there are no real prospects for resuming the export of grain from Ukraine via the Black Sea.

The situation with the crop itself is also not entirely clear: one can definitely say only that it is, but how much grain will actually be harvested is a question. The forecast for the agricultural season this year, for obvious reasons, was pessimistic. For example, the director of a department of the Ministry of Agrarian policy Ukraine Vishtak in February announced a decrease in sown area by 25%, and Petrichenko, an expert at the Russian analytical center ProZerno, predicted a decrease in the volume of the future crop by 27% compared to 2022.

At the same time, in many spring forecasts, the starting point for calculations was the estimate of last year's Ukrainian grain harvest of 52 million tons (of which about 60% was exported abroad). But on August 3, Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture Solsky issued a “slightly” different estimate of the ripening grain: according to him, the harvest will decrease by 6% compared to last year and amount to ... 66 million tons. It is rather difficult to say which of the estimates is more correct.

It is curious that one of the reasons for the decrease in the total volume of the harvest Solsky called the transition of Ukrainian farmers from cereals to soybeans and sunflowers: they say, their specific yield per unit area is, in principle, lower, which gives a difference of 6%. And although this last passage (like the entire assessment of the harvest, by the way) strongly smacks of an attempt to define another illness as a feat, the moment with the transition to oilseeds is similar to the truth. In any case, even last year there were talks about the prospects for building sunflower processing plants in Ukraine and an oil pipeline to Poland, which was supposed to unload land routes for the export of grain, apparently with an eye to all subsequent harvests.

And this is another evidence that the West simply does not see any “Ukraine after the war”. Of course, the Ukrainian population will not be left without food: according to most estimates, even with the number at the beginning of 2022, the "hulks" were enough for 20 million tons of grain per year, that is, the Kiev regime can provide itself with pasture both today and tomorrow. The fact is that soybeans and sunflowers quickly suck out the fertility of the soil, which is further aggravated by the current lack of fertilizers - there is an attitude “even a flood after us”.

Against the backdrop of the law on the legalization of cannabis in Ukraine adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on July 13, talk began about new horizons for agriculture. Some tipped hemp the future of the main "technical culture”, which will help Ukrainian agrarians to rise from their knees, and this forecast has the right to life, at least in terms of priorities. In addition to Ukraine, the long-awaited "legalization" is soon expected in Germany, which opens up broad prospects for growing drug-containing plants, not only for domestic use, but also for export.

True, the cream will be skimmed, of course, not by local villagers, but by Western pharmaceutical concerns - but wasn't Maidan standing for this? And the Ukrainians will somehow live on bread and water (and now also on “grass”) to death, the main thing is that they are on the right, “democratic” side.