A report produced by international human rights law firm, Global Rights Compliance claims to have exposed new evidence indicating Russia’s detailed and expansive plan to steal 12,000 tonnes a day of grain and fill the Kremlin’s war chest with the profits.

The report concentrates on the occupied grain rich Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine, where the first mass extraction of grain was reported in mid-March 2022. Upon capturing territory, Russian forces seized grain facilities from Ukrainian farmers and corporations, taking control of the surrounding transport networks and rapidly establishing safe and fast passage for stolen Ukrainian grain into Russia.

One farmer in Zaporizhzhia reported that as early as 1 March 2022, five days after the full-scale invasion, his farm was taken over by Russian forces. By 13 March, Russian officials were making public statements that they had plans to rapidly increase grain export from the region, utilising occupied ports, such as that in Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia. The speed at which Russia targeted and took over Ukraine’s grain infrastructure in these regions speaks to a highly coordinated level of pre-planning.

The report highlights multiple convoys of vehicles seen carrying grain in the direction of the Crimean Peninsula in the following weeks, and GPS trackers on farmers’ stolen trucks show them driving through Crimea and into Russia. Job adverts posted to Telegram by Russian logistics companies, and analysed by the investigators, show they could not get enough drivers in time to transport the vast quantities of stolen Ukrainian grain to Russia.

This pillaging, together with the Russian forces relentless attacks on civilian grain infrastructure including a missile strike on a Liberian grain ship only last week speaks to a “highly systematised weaponisation of Ukraine‘s grain… unprecedented in modern history”, say the expert authors of the report.