Russia began stealing Ukrainian grain of the new crop. According to HarvEast, the invaders stole up to 200,000 tons of crops from its farms in the eastern occupied areas..

HarvEast, which before the war was one of the ten largest Ukrainian landowners, said that 50,000 tons of crops were taken out of storage by Russian trucks, which then went in the direction of Russia, including from the villages of Mangush and Nikolskoye near Mariupol.. She estimates that about 150,000 more tons have been harvested from fields she occupies, which she no longer controls, although she cannot confirm exact numbers..

The entire volume of stolen grain would fill about three Panamax bulk carriers..

“The biggest loss is this year’s harvest,” HarvEast CEO Dmitry Skornyakov said in an interview.. “In June, they started harvesting our grain, and we don’t have access to this land,” according to Bloomberg..

According to analysts at the Kyiv School of Economics, abnormally high volumes of food supplies from the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula indicate that captured Ukrainian grain is being exported from there.. According to Skornyakov, HarvEast's land is close enough to Russia that its grain is likely to be delivered there by trucks..

Some HarvEast fields near Ksenovka in the occupied Donetsk region were harvested in June, according to Terrascope satellite data.. Its Normalized Vegetation Difference Index uses satellite imagery to calculate the amount of green space within an area..

The Russian invasion in February led to a blockade of the country's ports, which restricted exports and caused a spike in global food prices..

Shipments have resumed via a newly agreed export corridor, but volumes are only part of normal levels.

On Thursday, the Special Representative of Ukraine for the Middle East and Africa appealed to the countries of the League of Arab States with a call to arrest suspicious shipments of its grain. He said that "

HarvEast, part of Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov's SCM holding company, has lost about two-thirds of its land to Russian occupation, Skornyakov said..