Grand Theft

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, multiple reports have documented the occupation of farms, pillage of harvest, and appropriation of agribusinesses. In parallel, Russia’s armed forces carried out targeted strikes on agricultural storage and logistics infrastructure in territories they were unable to occupy and control.2 Shortly after the full-scale invasion began, Project Expedite Justice (PEJ) began supporting Ukrainian actors on the ground to document ongoing events and identify possible avenues towards justice. PEJ has focused this work on an often overlooked community: farmers and other agrarians.

 

This report represents the culmination of more than 2 years of on-the-ground work with farmers and other agrarian actors in Ukraine, supplemented with open-source investigations, analysis of phytosanitary certificates and shipping records, and other information-collection and analysis tools. This work aimed to highlight the experiences and suffering of Ukraine’s agricultural community, who were specifically targeted because of their profession, assets, and identity.

 

PEJ analyzed the information gathered from these sources to present the collective experience of Ukraine’s farmers under Russian occupation. Based on those findings, PEJ has identified possible avenues for accountability at the domestic, regional, and international levels. The legal frameworks include Ukrainian law; international law, particularly the Rome Statute (RS) for the International Criminal Court (ICC), focusing on the war crime of pillage, and international humanitarian law related to occupation; regional compensation avenues, particularly the Council of Europe’s Damage Register; and applicable sanctions regimes, particularly those available through the United States (US) and the European Union (EU).