Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine once again became the breadbasket of Europe, and its grain has increasingly fed the Middle East and Africa.
According to the European Commission, Ukraine accounts for 10% of the world wheat market, 15% of the corn market, and 13% of the barley market. With more than 50% of world trade, it is also the main player in the sunflower oil market.
As a result of Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago, there is a looming threat of food insecurity for those who have come to depend on the flow of those crops from Ukraine.
That fact isn’t lost on the Ukrainian farmers who now face losing life or limb just to help feed the world.
“A number of farmers have been killed driving tractors over land mines,” Illinois farmer and philanthropist Howard G. Buffett, told Farm Futures, an industry trade magazine. “I was told the guys who were in combines more likely survived.”
Audacious Farmers
Today the farmers take their lives into their own hands by just doing their job, but last spring, they were far more emboldened when a few farmers literally drove off with Russian tanks and other vehicles.
Videos of these audacious farmers soon circulated on social media.
One in particular purported to show a farmer tow away a Russian MB-TB, a Soviet-era multipurpose amphibious auxiliary armored tracked vehicle that was seemingly abandoned by its crew after it ran out of fuel.
That video went viral, having been seen millions of times, and became an early propaganda coup for Kyiv, and arguably one of the first of many humiliations to come for Moscow.
Ukrainian farmer STEALS Russian TANK with Tractor
The humble Ukrainian tractor then became one of the de facto symbols of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s unprovoked invasion.
Though the number of actual farmers who used their tractors to steal a Russian tank was likely small, it was significant enough that Ukraine’s National Agency for the Protection against Corruption (NAPC) declared that captured Russian tanks and other equipment would not be subject to declaration, nor would those items be taxed.
“Have you captured a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier and are worried about how to declare it? Keep calm and continue to defend the Motherland! There is no need to declare the captured Russian tanks and other equipment, because the cost of this … does not exceed 100 living wages (UAH 248,100),” NAPC’s press service said in a statement to the Interfax Ukraine news agency in March 2022.
Ukraine Maintained a Sense of Humor
A number of fake videos also circulated, showing everything from a Soyuz rocket to the Russian Navy’s cursed aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov being towed away.
In June, the iconic image of Ukraine’s resistance was commemorated on a postage stamp. The new design, which showed a tractor towing away a disabled Russian tank, was the result of a contest conducted by Ukrposhta, the country’s national postal carrier. Anastasia Bondarets won this second stamp-design contest – following a prior challenge, which depicted the defiant response by the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island in the early days of the invasion.
Bondarets’ entry was among the more than 1,500 received in the contest that Ukrposhta called “Good evening, we are from Ukraine.”
Expert Biography: A Senior Editor for 1945, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,000 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
From 19FortyFive
