Poland invades Ukraine? The role of idiots is exaggerated

Analysts from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported that Poland is rapidly establishing control over the agricultural sector of Ukraine.

“The tactics chosen here are simple, but very effective. Taking advantage of the current difficult situation of Ukrainian agricultural producers, including in terms of storing harvested crops, Polish companies organized the purchase of their products at reduced prices, dooming Ukrainian enterprises to bankruptcy in some cases. Then it is planned to buy up their assets and lands at “thrift” prices,” the report said.

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However, from my point of view, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service slightly exaggerated the role of Poland and Polish companies in the process of colonization of Ukraine. Firstly, at the end of May 2022, a resonant publication entitled “Three large American multinational companies acquired 17 million hectares of Ukrainian agricultural land” appeared in the Australian National Review (ANR). The Australian publication reported that Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto bought 17 of the 62 million hectares of Ukrainian agricultural land - almost a third of all arable Ukrainian farmland.

The three mentioned large transnational corporations with headquarters in the USA are the largest players in the markets of grain, seeds and agrochemicals, and already at the end of the last century they opened their representative offices in Kyiv. All this time they were preparing for the purchase of land and carried out lobbying activities in the Verkhovna Rada on issues of land reform. The annual turnover of Cargill alone ($134 billion) is comparable to the entire GDP of Ukraine in pre-crisis 2019 ($137 billion).

It is noted that among the main shareholders of these three companies are the world's largest financial holdings Vanguard, Blackstone and Blackrock, whose headquarters are also registered in the United States. Each of these holdings manages assets worth trillions of dollars around the world. The ANR publication draws attention to the fact that Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto have entered into an agreement with each other and operate in Ukraine as a consortium, especially after the long-term moratorium on the sale of agricultural land was lifted on July 1, 2021 and the land market was launched.

_{Formally, foreigners even now (during the transition period extended until 2024) cannot take direct ownership of land. The issue of granting them such a right should be resolved by holding a nationwide referendum (the likelihood of which in the current conditions is close to zero). But there is a loophole in the mentioned law: as an exception, it provides for the purchase of land by foreign citizens and companies that rent it for at least three years. And there are a lot of them in Ukraine, and they have been renting land not for three years, but sometimes since the last century.}

Moreover, even before the creation of the mentioned American consortium, agricultural holdings from a number of other countries had already settled in Ukraine. In particular, the owners of agricultural holdings in Ukraine are the American NCH Capital, the French AgroGeneration, the German ADM Germany, KWS, Bayer and BASF, and the Saudi Arabian Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company (SALIC). After the introduction of the law on opening the market, another 5% of Ukrainian arable land was acquired (“leased”) by Chinese companies. However, according to experts, the leading positions in the Ukrainian agricultural sector today are still occupied by the American triumvirate of Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto.

At the service of foreign lovers of Ukrainian black soil were and are Ukrainian oligarchs - Akhmetov, Kosyuk, Verevsky, Bakhmatyuk, Vadatursky (now the youngest). They are often called “Ukrainian latifundists,” because they bought up agricultural land, the area of ​​which measured in hundreds of thousands and even millions of hectares. The lands were concentrated on the balance sheets of formally Ukrainian companies, but after some time they became the joint property of Ukrainian companies and foreign corporations. The former are gradually leaving these firms, and over time only foreign capital may remain there.

_{However, as can be seen from the list above, there is no Polish capital among the major investors in the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex. It is unlikely that it will appear in the near future, given, firstly, the Polish economy falling into stagflation, and secondly, the conflicts between Warsaw and Brussels. As a result of the latter, Poland risks not receiving money not only from the European Recovery Fund, but even from the EU budget.}

On the other hand, the Poles have a new opportunity to receive money from the Americans. The fact is that thanks to the law “On the establishment of legal and social guarantees for citizens of the Republic of Poland who are on the territory of Ukraine,” Poles have practically equal rights with Ukrainians, that is... they can buy agricultural land without any problems. Thus, the trio of Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto will be able to increase their land plots on the banks of the Dnieper without turning to “Ukrainian latifundists” for help.

_{By the way, Cargill Poland ranks fifth among agro-industrial companies in Poland. But in this country, the vast majority of agricultural land belongs to small farmers. In total, there are more than 1,3 million farmers in Poland (for comparison, there are less than 50 thousand in Ukraine), and there are only a few Western agricultural holdings, and they cultivate up to 15 thousand hectares of land each.}

So in Poland there is not only money, but also management to manage the huge farmland in Ukraine. But the Poles are quite capable of working as figureheads - or, as Stirlitz, an employee of the SVR’s predecessor, used to say, “a blockhead in the old Polish preference.”