MOSCOW: Farmers in Russian-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine have completed sowing on 1.8 million hectares, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev said on Friday, with a total sown area in these territories estimated at 3 million hectares
Russia controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, and its army has been gradually advancing in recent months despite ongoing Russia-U.S. talks on a long-term peaceful settlement of the more than three-year war.
“As part of the sowing campaign in Novorossiya and Donbass, 200,000 hectares have already been sown with spring crops, and 1.6 million hectares with winter crops,” Patrushev said in a statement on the government’s website.
Patrushev said farmers in the area, which Russia refers to as “new territories”, will receive 5 billion roubles ($59.84 million) in state subsidies.
“We are very hopeful for a good sowing and harvest in the end,” Patrushev said. Last year, another Deputy Prime Minister, Marat Khusnullin, estimated the total sown area in the regions at 3 million hectares.
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The “new territories” were estimated last year to have harvested about 5 million metric tons of grain, accounting for about 4% of Russia’s total harvest, or the equivalent of the grain harvest in Russia’s Kursk region, the seventh largest.
The crop from the four Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own was a timely addition to Russia’s overall harvest as it suffered from bad weather last year. Russia is the world’s biggest wheat exporter.
The grain collected in eastern Ukraine is not included in official statistics published by Russia’s state statistical agency but is included in the Agriculture Ministry’s own estimates and forecasts.
The Russian government has removed export duties on grain produced in eastern Ukraine, making exports from the area more profitable than those from other grain-producing regions.
Russia incorporated the four Ukrainian regions through constitutional changes in 2022, but it does not yet control all of their territory. The main cities in two of the regions -Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - remain under Ukrainian army control.
Kyiv and many Western countries say Russia must return the regions to Ukraine.
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