Since the beginning of the war, Russians have stolen and smuggled hundreds of thousands of tons of grain from the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Luhansk and Donetsk regions worth more than half a billion dollars. From the illegal sales of Ukrainian grain, the Kremlin spends this money not even for its own people, but for the war with Ukraine.
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At the moment, the second phase of grain export from Crimea has begun. And one question remains: why the world leaders have not yet blocked the entire transport system of Russia's trade routes.
The Kremlin's New Criminal Schemes
It seems that Russia is once again looking for loopholes and opportunities to implement their schemes to sell Ukrainian stolen grain. According to a Crimean source who did not want to reveal his identity, Russia has once again started exporting grain from the territory of Crimea.
At the moment, in the Luhansk region, Russians are emptying the elevators and using trucks delivering grain to the ports of Sevastopol, Feodosiya and Kerch. From there, grain is loaded onto ships.
When entering Crimean ports, bulk carriers turn off their radars, so they cannot be tracked by vessel monitoring systems such as Marine Traffic or Equasis.
Also, the source stated that one vessel called “POMPANO” on September 30 to October 4 made a transition from the Kerch Commercial Sea Port to the port of Eren, Turkey.
With the help of the ship monitoring site, you can track the history of this ship.
The map shows the current location of “POMPANO”, the vessel is located in one of the Turkish ports of Eren.
Ukrainian grain export routes used by Russia
Further you can see the chronology of visits by this vessel to seaports.
We see that on September 26, the vessel arrived at the port (RUZZZ) which is under the control of the Russian Federation, but they either hid or deleted information about this port. The ship stood there for a day and a half, which is enough to load about 100-120 thousand tons of grain onto a bulk carrier.
After that, the vessel arrived at the port of Taman, which is one of the most promising, dynamically developing grain terminals of the Russian Federation on the Black Sea, covering a wide range of services related to the transshipment of grain cargo.
According to experts, the bulk carrier could have loaded part of the stolen grain in one of the ports in Crimea and made additional loading in Taman.
Double Game: Why Does Russia Still Have a Trade Corridor?
A lot of the words seem to be reliable, but it's far from it. Sanctions imposed against Russia should limit not only political and economic activity, but also where the closure of airspace and seaports is also expected.
Ports in which Russian ships are still freely allowed to enter. If you look at the data from the Marine Traffic monitoring, a large number of cargo ships are heading from the Azov Sea to Turkey.
Cases have already been known when Russia exported grain from the occupied regions of Ukraine to Turkey. For example, the case when in June 2022 the dry cargo ship Mikhail Nenashev delivered 27 thousand tons of grain to the city of Eskenderun (Turkey).
While Europe is trying to help Ukraine with weapons and political support, there are countries and companies that are playing a double game and looking for benefits only for themselves, not thinking about the consequences in the future.
Food as a weapon in war
Until February 24, 2022, Ukraine provided food for more than 400 million people worldwide and was one of the largest exporters of wheat.
The seizure of grain is associated with the policy of crop confiscation in the villages in the 1930s, when between 4 million and 10 million people died in Ukraine as a result of the actions of the Soviet authorities that provoked the Holodomor.
Russian propaganda operates according to its typical method - they first create a problem, and then they try to blame others for it. Thus, Russia blames the sanctions and the European Union for everything, while she herself is looking for ways to influence.
The methods used by Russia today in Ukraine are similar to those used by the KGB in the 1930's: the deliberate destruction of food and agricultural infrastructure, especially small farms, and the theft of Ukrainian grain.
In addition to its energy resources, Russia is using food as a weapon in this war. The blockade of grain supplies and its misappropriation in order to create world hunger in order to put pressure on the world and especially on the EU and Ukraine.
Ukraine calls on the international community to condemn Russia's actions, demand its withdrawal from Ukrainian territory and increase economic sanctions in order to stop the armed aggression against Ukraine and prevent further humanitarian catastrophe and aggravation of hunger in the world.