Collaborators from Melitopol send first train with stolen grain to Crimea
IRYNA BALACHUK - WEDNESDAY, 8 JUNE 2022, 08:46
The first freight train carrying grain stolen from Ukraine has been sent to Crimea from the part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast temporarily occupied by the Russian military.
Source: Russian news agency Interfax, quoting Yevhen Balytskyi, the so-called head of the military-civil administration of Zaporizhzhia region, appointed by the occupiers
Quote from Balytskyi: "I am proud and happy to be the first to inform you that the train... the first carriages, railway carriages and 11 wagons have gone to Crimea with grain from a Melitopol grain silo".
Details: The collaborator expressed hope that "in the near future these supplies will be increased a hundredfold" - "hundreds of carriages, thousands of carriages".
According to Balytskyi, Ukrainian farmers will allegedly "receive money" for the grain stolen by the Russians, "which will be very useful to them so that they can sow the next crops."
The occupation administration of the Melitopol district stated that "the region has always been famous for high yields of grain crops", so "naturally, the nearest countries are seen as the export market".
Background:
- In early May, the Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration reported that the invaders were exporting grain and vegetables from the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia Oblast to Crimea.
- On 4 May, Taras Vysotskyi, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, said the Russians had removed a total of about 400,000 tonnes of grain from the four temporarily occupied Ukrainian oblasts - that is, a third of all stocks in the regions.
- On 7 June, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu said that the Russian invaders had opened a Russian land corridor to occupied Crimea through the temporarily occupied southern regions of Ukraine.
- Shoigu also added that the Russian occupiers had restored the possibility of running trains on six railway sections between "Russia, Donbas, Ukraine and Crimea", with a total length of 1,200 km. He also noted that they had started deliveries to Mariupol, Berdiansk and Kherson.
- Rail services between Crimea and Ukraine were terminated in 2014 when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula.
