A.G.R. Group takes 1.5 month to restore agricultural cluster in Kyiv region after occupation

KYIV. Jan 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The agricultural cluster Brovary of A.G.R. Group in the spring of 2022 was occupied by Russian troops who invaded the northern regions of Ukraine, rocket and artillery shelling near the holding damaged the operating silo, grain drying complex and grain storage with a capacity of 20,000 tonnes.

Misak Khidiryan, the owner of the agrarian group, said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine that it took more than UAH 5 million and a month and a half of intensive work to restore the cluster’s performance, as the agricultural holding was in a hurry to carry out sowing and harvesting campaigns on time.

In addition, Russian shelling also damaged A.G.R. Group’s equipment put into winter storage, resulting in damage to John Deere tractors and trailed units.

"Our Brovary cluster was occupied in the spring. The Russian occupiers knocked out the gates with an armored personnel carrier, took the guards hostage and began to loot: they stole diesel fuel, equipment from warehouses, damaged expensive agricultural machinery … Up to the point that the occupiers broke the doors in self-propelled sprayers in order to get the radios. They couldn’t take it – they just cut open the panels," the owner of A.G.R. Group said in the interview.

Khidiryan specified that in addition to the restoration of agricultural buildings, the demining of the Brovary cluster took about ten days. Also, a lot of damaged and destroyed military equipment of the occupiers remained in the fields.

"Near the Brovary cluster, there was a lot of broken Russian equipment, which we pulled with our tractors for further transfer to the Armed Forces of Ukraine – there were mostly broken tanks, but there were also intact ones. Part of the equipment of the invaders was dragged to our base, loaded onto trawls and taken for repairs. It was such that one tank had to be pulled out of the fields by three powerful tractors. We also went to neighboring villages and pulled trophies of rushists from people’s gardens," Khidiryan said.

As reported with reference to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine, the total direct damage caused to the agricultural industry of Ukraine as a result of a full-scale Russian invasion reached $9.3-9.8 billion by the end of 2022, which is comparable to the total profit of the country’s agricultural enterprises for 2020 and 2021.