(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In 2006 decided FNs Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and EBRD that the world should be fed by granaries i Eastern Europe. (see history under investigation) The EU's aim is to increase production and to transform Ukraine from a self-sufficient country into a global leader in international agro-industry.
In recent years, international agro-industrial companies (American food companies such as Cargill and Bunge) have invested millions of dollars in increased production capacity in Ukraine, often supported by the EBRD and the European Investment Bank (EID).
Until 2014, the EU, the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) and World Bank President Yanukovych for an association agreement with the EU. Yanukovych was generally positive about the EU, but denied that a free trade in agricultural land applied to Western investors. This was the reason why President Yanukovych was ousted in January 2014. The IMF agreement was signed later that year by the newly installed president. The agreement contained, among other things, a demand that Law 552-IX should be repealed, but did not demand any specific agricultural reform in Ukraine, nor did it demand that foreigners be allowed to buy Ukrainian land.
Zelenskyi's land sale agreement
Only in April 2020, after the EU's protein plan from 2018 and the EU's Green Deal agreement from 2019, did the IMF's condition for complete free trade in agricultural plots come. At the same time, 64,4 percent of Ukrainians were against the introduction of such free trade (cf. the Rasumkov Centre). Nevertheless, the president signed Zelenskyj the free trade agreement, with a promise of a referendum in the summer of 2024.
Foreign purchases of rural land are likely to be allowed for the first time in Ukraine's modern history unless the referendum corrects the temporary, unlimited Zelenskyi-imposed agricultural land sales agreement. If so, it could have far-reaching consequences for Ukrainian agriculture. Even the World Bank expects that the new land reforms will push small farmers out of agriculture so that the biggest companies can become bigger.
According to the American Oakland Report War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural land (2023) oligarchs and large agro-conglomerates now control 28 percent of Ukraine's arable land. The fifth largest landowner in Ukraine is the American seed-and-farming company NCH Capital, financed by a large number of American pension funds. How is this possible when Ukraine legalized foreign ownership in 2001?
In April 2024, Mykola became Minister of Agriculture Solskyi accused of corruption in the period 2017–18, for the misuse of 1250 plots of land with a total value of about 7,3 million dollars, according to the Ukrainian anti-corruption agency NABU. Solskyi was Zelensky's agriculture minister from 2022, and was behind the president's law on free trade with agricultural land in 2020.
The Ukrainian agricultureit has gone from self-sufficiency to monocultural market-driven food production – and massive financing from Western financial institutions.
In the gray area of the law, Ukrainian-registered companies or 'resident shareholders' operate as legal acquirers. In addition, foreign companies can lease option rights for agricultural trade in Ukraine for up to 50 years. Today, large international companies (agroholding) have leasing agreements with most of the 6–8 million plot owners.
International lending institutions
The biggest agroselskapone receives support from international lending institutions (such as EBRD and the European Investment Bank [EID]), among other things received Nestlé's subsidiary 42 million dollar from the EBRD in December 2022 for a new production facility and Ukraine. One of the largest leasing groups, Astarte, runs farming operations, soy production, a dairy farm and five sugar beet plantations with support from the EBRD. The largest holding company in Ukraine is the Luxembourg-registered – and formerly Warsaw-listed sunflower producer Kernel, with revenue of $3,5 billion in 2023. Kernel delisted from the Warsaw Stock Exchange after the invasion, where its market value fell by 60 percent. The Ukrainian oligarch Andriy Verevshkyj today controls Kernel through Luxembourg-registered Namsen (74 percent). The Financial Times has a case that mentions that Verevshkyj possibly wanted to ensure an open market for foreign shareholders, or with the delisting to buy back the company cheaply.
Free trade was the reason why President Yanukovych was ousted in January 2014
Other EBRD-projects is a US-based equity capital firm, the leasing company UkrLandFarming, the Ukrainian agro company MHP, and Saudi Arabian and French companies such as Agro Generation, which was established by an American fighter pilot in 2006.
Ukrainian agriculture has moved from self-sufficiency to monocultureell market-controlled food production. Within a few years, agriculture has become the driving force in Ukrainian foreign trade. The associated actors are expanding their control over Ukrainian agriculture through massive financing from Western financial institutions.
The government's pension fund
Norwegian politicians have been Zelenskys keenest contributors and supporters. In order to help Ukraine with national self-government, Norwegian funds were already channeled through 2011 EBRD despite knowledge of extensive corruption. The government's pension fund is involved as a shareholder in the aforementioned Cyprus-registered company Astarte (approx. 8 million shares) and in the Ukrainian-oligarch-owned poultry farm Ovastar (approx. 27 million shares).
Astarta was established in 1993 by a Ukrainian former tractor and combine assistant, Viktor Ivanchyk. In 1994, he became a director in Kyiv of Astarta, a Ukrainian company with foreign investors. Astarta is one of the groups that both finances the Ukrainian military and sends its employees to the war (512 people) at the same time as the company increased its turnover by 21 per cent in 2023, from six billion in 2022, a turnover that was higher than before the war. Astarta owns 220 hectares of agricultural land in seven regions and actively collaborates with the EBRD, IFC, the European Investment Bank, the Dutch bank FMO and the German Development Bank.
Ukrainians also die on the battlefield for the rights of multinational companies.
In a press release from 6 May 2022, Development Minister Anne Beathe Tvinnereim (Sp) wrote that "Norway gives 50 million to Ukrainian farmers». But it is not Ukrainian farmers who receive the Norwegian millions. EBRD supports international commercial agro-conglomerates, not Ukrainian poor small farmers. Norwegian politicians claim the fight is about ideal values such as freedom, democracy and national self-determination. Now it seems that the right to self-determination Norwegian politicians are fighting for in Ukraine applies to Ukrainian oligarchs, the EU and multinational companies' right to commit a robbery of Ukrainian rights to their own land.
What do Norwegian politicians such as Prime Minister Jonas Gahr really mean store when they say that our struggle is common with that of the Ukrainian people? Ukrainians also die on the battlefield for the rights of multinational companies.
Norwegian economic interests
In 2021, British financial analysis firm Global Data revealed that just over 300 foreign companies have at least one subsidiary in Ukraine. About a quarter are headquartered in the USA, and over 150 of the companies are based in Western Europe. The largest foreign groups in Ukraine are headquartered in former colonial powers such as England, Spain, the USA and Germany. The largest foreign groups in Ukraine (33 percent) are registered on Kypros. Other investors come from Switzerland, but also from Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
The British company Investor Media made March 1, 2022 an analysis of which international companies in Ukraine were most threatened by a Russian attack in the summer of 2022. The two companies that would be hardest hit were the American food company Bungeand the Norwegian renewable energy company Scatec, both with ten subsidiaries each in Ukraine.
The largest shareholder in Scatec is the energy company Equinor, where the main shareholder is the Norwegian state (and Folketrygdfondet). Scatec made large investments in Ukraine before the war broke out, including in 2020 in Cherkasy regions (located on the west bank of the Dnieper, south of Kyiv) and i Mykolajiv region in 2021 (on the east bank of the Dnieper, not far from Kherson). In the autumn of 2022, the share value in Scatec plummeted, just as Investor Media predicted. Not long afterwards, Equinor bought Scatec (spring 2023).
The right to self-determination Norwegian politicians are fighting for in Ukraine applies to Ukrainian oligarchs, the EU and multinational companies' right to commit a robbery of Ukrainian rights to their own land.
The other big Norwegian thing is the wind power producer Emergency. Emergy has pregistered owners: Trond Mohn, Kjell Inge Røkke and Lars Nilsen. Ukraine installed a record amount of new renewable energy capacity during 2019-2021. One of the Emergy projects is the Zophia wind farm (800 MW), west of the Sea of Azov, one of three Emergy projects in Ukraine, which will be one of the largest onshore projects in Europe. Another Emergy project is the EBRD-backed Syvash wind farm (250 MW) in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine (2021), a project that was at risk of bankruptcy but was saved by an insurance payout when it was hit by Russian missiles in 2022.
The Syvash park is one of Europe's largest with an area of 1307 ha, leased from the reserve areas of Pershokostiantynivska, Hryhorivska, Pavliska and Strohanivska village councils. The project cost close to NOK four billion to build, primarily with financing from the EBRD and, among others, the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO).
#Industrial agriculture# in Ukraine is a large market for the Norwegian fertilizer producer Yara International.
Does the Norwegian military support the Ukrainian people or rather Norske investments in Ukraine? The right to national self-determination is perhaps the only thing this war is not about. More than weapons, Ukraine needs political tools like right of repatriation and corporation tax (such as the Norwegian the petroleum tax). In the long run, this can support the national right to self-determination.
Anarcho-syndicalist
The interest in the freedom struggle in Ukraine has long historical lines in Norway. The Norwegian anarcho-syndicalists were very interested in what happened after the Soviet-Ukrainian war (1917–21). When the Bolsheviks deposed the national bourgeois government in Kiev, Soviet Socialist Ukraine became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. From 1918 all land belonged to the state. Kolkhozer (production cooperatives) and sovkhozes (state-owned companies) used the land for free for an indefinite period, but the buildings and machinery were owned by the peasants, either privately or collectively. At the same time, an almost unknown political movement (the Makhno movement) had fought hard against oppressive landlords and the national government. But also against the Bolsheviks. Although the Ukrainian anarchistone saw their struggle for freedom as part of one revolutionary struggle, they accused the Bolsheviks of having too few demands. The demand of the revolutionary anarchists in Ukraine was that "the entire industrial activity should be handed over to the workers immediately, the land and agriculture to the peasants". The Makhno Movements goal was a system of free Soviets in Ukraine on the way to a stateless and classless society. Norwegian anarchosyndicalist therefore followed closely when anarchist communes were organized in southern and eastern Ukraine around the 1920s. In 1924, the Norske Syndikalisters Federation's publishing house published Peter Arshinovwith hi The freedom struggle of the Ukrainian peasants 1917-21. Collective farming continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 with 8000 kolkhozes in Ukraine and 3,8 million kolkhoz workers. And in 1992, the law came where the kolkhozniks were allowed to own land. At the same time, the sale of state land to Ukrainian oligarchs began. To limit foreign acquisition, 96 percent of Ukrainian agricultural land was subject to Law 552-IX (1992). At the same time, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was established to promote the development of a market economy in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the wall. The International Finance Institute (IFC) expected 1-2 percent growth in GDP associated with Ukrainian agriculture. It was revealed huge , ofit#opportunities for the sale of agricultural land.
