Why It Doesn't Make Sense To Sanction The Company Shipping Stolen Grain From Ukraine
Spoiler alert: they're basically already sanctioned
A lot of evidence suggests Russia is stealing a lot of Ukrainian grain and trying to sell it.
Ukrainian agriculture officials and farmers say Chechens are stealing their machinery, trying to run their farms, and selling their crops. Grain theft is occurring in Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk; quoting McCullough, Chris, “Russians reportedly steal grain, farm machinery”, in Agri-View, May 3, 2022:
Grain trucks have been filmed taking grain across the border while other footage shows expensive stolen Ukrainian farm machinery loaded onto Russian trucks. Some of the stolen farm machinery has been traced to farms as far away as in Chechnya, a republic in Russia.
Ukraine’s deputy agriculture minister, Taras Vysotskiy, said, “There are confirmed facts that several-hundred-thousand tons of grain in total were taken out of the Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”…
…Russian forces have been deliberately targeting Ukrainian farms with bombs, destroying farm infrastructure, farm machinery and killing livestock. The most recent case is a grain elevator in the Dnipropetrovsk region that was attacked by the Russians; a warehouse was totally destroyed.
With the forced closure of ports that normally export grain out of Ukraine, the price of food around the world has steadily increased. Ukrainian farmers are outraged that Russians are stealing their grain and machinery for themselves, sending it across the border.
Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskiy said grain theft has increased in the past two weeks in the occupied regions.
He said, “I personally hear this from many silo owners in the occupied territory. This is outright robbery. And this is happening everywhere in occupied territory.
“There will soon be a wheat harvest in the south. But farmers in this situation may well say, ‘Here are the keys to the tractor; go collect it yourself, if you want it.’”
Kremlin officials have denied Ukraine’s allegations, saying they didn’t know where the information was coming from.
Meanwhile Russian troops in the occupied city of Melitopol have reportedly stolen all the equipment from a farm-machinery dealership there and have reportedly shipped it to Chechnya. The thieves targeted high-end machinery at the John Deere dealership, including combines and tractors worth more than $5 million. But the machines had been locked remotely and were of no use to those trying to access them.
Two combine harvesters, a tractor and a seeder had been taken first but everything else was removed during the next few weeks. In all 27 pieces of farm machinery were stolen. Due to their onboard GPS technology, they were last tracked to the village of Zakhan Yurt in Chechnya. Sources say Russian technology experts are trying to bypass the technology to allow the machines to operate.
On other farms the Russians are forcing the staff to work for them. Kherson farmer Albert Cherepakha harvests 20,000 hectares per year – about 50,000 U.S. acres.
“Groups of armed Chechens, calling themselves Kadyrovites, entered my business units in the Genichesk district on April 11-12,” he said. “We have bases in the villages of Chongar, Chervonoye and Pavlovka. The gunmen said that from now on the company’s property belongs to them.
“The invaders are now running the production processes at the farm and commanded my workers to start sowing, to prepare an application for the necessary inputs. Then they started to take out and sell goods stored in stocks.” (emphasis added)
Multiple sources confirm the Matros Pozynich, carrying stolen Ukrainian grain from Crimea, was originally headed to Egypt and diverted to Syria.
Multiple sources, including the intelligence arm of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, confirm the Matros Pozynich, carrying stolen Ukrainian grain from Crimea, was originally headed to Egypt and diverted to Syria; as of May 4th it was transiting between Crete and Cyprus.
In addition to the Matros Pozynich, the Mikhail Nenashev also carried wheat from Sevastopol to Turkey and was attempting to carry wheat from Sevastopol to Alexandria as of May 5th; transponder deactivation shows criminal intent, according to the Peacemaker Center, an activist OSINT site with connections to Ukrainian law enforcement and intelligence.
The Mikhail Nenashev is also owned by Crane Marine Contractor, OOO or KMK, LLC, which also owns the Matros Koshka. KMK, LLC’s chief executive officer is Dmitry Aleksandrovich Ryndin (Дмитрий Александрович Рындин). CNN confirms the Peacemaker Center account and company identification of KMK, LLC.
KMK, LLC is owned by is Joint Stock Company Southern Shipbuilding & Ship Repair, which is owned by Joint Stock Company United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), which is sanctioned.
The relationship looks like this:
The question becomes, then, as many on Twitter are asking, why not designate KMK, LLC and its CEO for sanctions?
The answer is, because they are already treated as sanctioned entities for all intents and purposes, because of their second-order ownership by a sanctioned entity. USC is sanctioned, which means that all its subsidiaries, and its subsidiaries’ subsidiaries are sanctioned.
Even though Joint Stock Company Southern Shipbuilding & Repair and KMK, LLC are not specifically designated under sanctions, nor are the specific vessels the Matros Koshka, Matros Pozynich and Mikhail Nenashev… by virtue of their nexus with the sanctioned entity USC via a series of ownership stakes that are over 50% (100% ownership, in fact), they are already treated as sanctioned entities.
It is an enforcement matter, that is to say, not a designation matter.
Not that it’s an uninteresting enforcement matter, purely in the abstract.
Anyway.