Belarus plans to buy vegetables from the occupied Kherson region

During a meeting with the occupying governor of Kherson region Volodymyr Saldo, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that his country is ready to buy vegetables grown on the temporarily occupied left bank of the region.

This was reported by the MOST media outlet.

According to Lukashenka, Belarus is ready not only to buy fruit and vegetables that it does not grow itself, but also to supply its equipment to the occupied part of Kherson region. Minsk also plans to set up service centers for its maintenance and provide assistance in the fields of construction and agriculture.

Earlier, journalists found out that the Belarusian company Agroprodukt is already using rapeseed illegally exported from the temporarily occupied areas of Kherson region. This raw material is processed into rapeseed oil, which is subsequently exported to the European Union, in particular to Lithuania and Latvia.

According to the Federal Information System "Grain," in 2023, almost 5,000 tons of rapeseed were exported to Belarus from the occupied part of Kherson region. Part of this harvest went to the Belarusian Agroproduct, which is one of the largest suppliers of rapeseed oil to the EU.

Despite the ban, Lithuanian and Latvian companies continue to import rapeseed oil from Belarus. Although Lithuania has banned the import of Belarusian food products since June 2024, a journalistic investigation revealed that Agroprodukt's products are still being shipped to the EU.

According to <b>Eurostat</b>, in the first half of 2024 alone, EU countries imported more <b>than 90 thousand tons of</b> rapeseed oil from Belarus for a total of <b>67 million euros</b>. The main buyers of these products were Lithuania and Latvia.

Investigators found that Agroprodukt was linked to Belarusian officials. One of the co-founders of the company is Transit-Auto 2003, a company that is under Ukrainian sanctions for helping the Russian army. The owner of Transit-Auto 2003, Aleksei Shvedou, visited Ukraine together with Aleksandr Zaitsev, who works in the Presidential Administration of Belarus, and Konstantin Sumar, former governor of Brest Oblast, who called Lukashenka "a little bit higher than God."

Катерина Глушко