Hero of Ukraine Leonid YAKOVYSHYN: Ukrainian agrarians are being “pressed” by gas barons

    Open Letter to the Honorable Volodymyr ZelenskyiPresident of Ukraine       From Leonid Yakovyshyn     Hero of Ukraine, General Director     LLC "Zemlya i Volya",      4, Chernihivska St., 17400,     Town of Bobrovytsia, Nizhyn district, Chernihiv region. Dear President of Ukraine:        Concerns about whether "Won`t we “burn" Ukraine with "golden" gas?, I expressed in a newspaper article in early July 2012, after the "Kharkiv Agreements" further tightened the stranglehold around the neck of Ukrainians. Because even with a gas price discount of $100US per thousand cubic meters (for the base in Sevastopol), we paid more for Russian gas than a number of European countries.      Then, in our company, a decision was made to reduce the consumption of imported gas. More John Deere combines were purchased in order to shorten the corn harvesting period and start the harvest with low grain moisture, saving more than one hundred thousand cubic meters of expensive gas on corn drying. We also organized the production of fuel pellets from the waste obtained during the cleaning of grain from combines. Office and household premises were switched to cheap fuel.      We are still using this to save on gas consumption, but this year the national government has thrown new gas "stranglehold" around the neck of agrarians: tripled the prices of gas and its production products - ammonium nitrate. We need 11M US dollars to purchase it. Until this year, we used anhydrous ammonia, which is three-fold cheaper than granulated nitrate and much more effective, but this fertilizer is no longer produced in Ukraine.     I understand that our state is waging a fierce war, but agrarians are not standing aside from this terrible disaster either: we are living and working between bullets, we are helping the army, firefighters, since the beginning of the war, our workers have been receiving salaries every month, on 33K hectares of leased land we have brought more than 100M hryvnias of taxes for the budget.     With the new prices for gas, ammonium nitrate, fuel, spare parts for equipment, issues with the sale of grain, we are already thinking of whether we will sow the land next spring? In our company, the production cost of a ton of corn grain was within $70US, one of the lowest in Europe. With the governmental "stranglehold", the cost price will reach $200US and more. Who will buy such expensive grain from us? Where will we get hundreds of millions for employee salaries, replenishment of the budget, pension and military funds from? And we are also repairing and building roads in the district with our own funds, constructing free housing for employees, and invest millions in the development of the enterprise every year.     The occupiers had not had time to crush our company, they wreaked havoc in three departments. Now the native government has thrown such a stranglehold around our neck, from which more than a thousand workers may lose their jobs, and the state treasury - multi-million revenues.      Recently, I published another concern in the regional press: "Won`t "golden" gas burn Ukrainian agrarians?..." The publication attracted the attention of journalists of the Independent Media Forum and its Ukrainian-Polish information agency, which in Ukrainian, Polish and English tells the world about how farmers of Ukraine live and work in the epicenter of war and peace. Almost 400,000 Ukrainian and European readers have already been interested in my story about the "stranglehold" of domestic gas skinners, I receive positive feedbacks, but I see that the "native" (in quotes!) government officials remain deaf and blind to this fateful problem.     During my sixty-year experience as an organizer of agricultural production, I have survived many idiots from the authorities, fought with them at Communist Party forums, during the first convocation of the independent parliament, in regional and central mass media, but to so deliberately make a "gas bonfire" for agrarians - this is the first time I see it, yet in extremely difficult times for the Motherland! Again, I have to recall the words of Lina Kostenko: "The horror is not in the fact that it is difficult to live now, but in the fact that it is insulting."     Our company never asked for handouts, but the science of efficient market agrarian economy with advanced technologies was borrowed from the USA in the early 90s. At the same time, two leading agricultural companies began providing us with parent forms of world corn hybrids, so that we could produce seeds of these hybrids in our fields and at our seed factory. So they help us save 3M US dollars on seeds every year, and also create additional jobs at the seed factory. Overseas, we have long been purchasing John Deere tractors and combines, state-of-the-art drying and elevator equipment at stable prices, without any "premiums" and "kickbacks". And what do we get from "native" government officials? "Golden" gas that is already "diamond"? And this is the gas being extracted from the bowels, which according to the Constitution belong to the people freed from the Russian bondage? What independence was obtained in 1991?     It would not be so insulting if the gas "stranglehold" was thrown around our neck for the last blow against the enemy, for defeating him. But it is possible to prove on the fingers of one hand that Ukrainian gas barons are "pressing" us for their million-like salaries and bonuses, for luxurious life for their relatives.      At the presidential elections, I was among your supporters, many of our employees voted for you. We hoped that you would finally root out corruption schemes and greedy embezzlement of the predecessor's government. But even before the war, your hands had not reached not only the destruction of this shameful abomination for the whole world, but also the legal scheme of profiting of gas tycoons.      A year ago, Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Economy of Ukraine Oleksiy Lyubchenko stated that the production cost of one thousand cubic meters of Ukrainian gas was UAH 3,000. Why do they sell it to us, agrarians, for UAH 40k or more? Well, you crush us, and who will cover the huge budget deficit, create food security? Will partners help? Thanks, they are helping. But there is an ancient folk wisdom: "Whoever came for a loan, even worse - for a handout, is not welcomed, but only used." You are a talented, young person, you could not fail to know this.       Nor believe I that you still haven't realized for what purpose Poroshenko's team developed the so-called code of the gas distribution system, approving it not by the Law of Ukraine, but by the Cabinet of Ministers resolution dated 30 September 2015? Did this create another "golden" legal feeder for gas barons? Those who had not invested a single hryvnia and had done nothing for the construction or upgrade of the gas transportation system became at the "trough". It was built from the national budget, from the coffers of farms and enterprises, and from the pockets of gas consumers. Who asked us when the finished system was handed over to national drones to earn billions on the people's pipeline? Even using gas terror against us.      Let's say that our company paid for gas transit on 30 December 2021 for January in advance, as required by the transitor, at the price set at that time. But somewhere on 2 or 3 January, another bloodsucker (NEURS) raised the price for transit, and our company found itself in debt, having paid UAH 630,000 in advance. We didn't pay UAH 47,000 through no fault of ours, but a team flew in from the region to cut off our gas supply. The drying complex operates for a month, but we are forced to pay UAH 677,000 every month for gas transit through the gas pipeline we built, even with this attitude towards us. And we are far from alone in such an uncivilized cooperation between commodity producers and suppliers of the national energy resource privatized by them. I believe that it is long past time to nationalize all resource wealth, which according to the Constitution belongs to the people. Because greedy privatizer-grabbers do not want to manage them for the benefit of the state and its society. And they don't think about how many greedy idiots and government weak-minded scoundrels have already been thrown into the abyss of history without a trace. That is their way?... But others stand in line who also don't know how to measure. When will this shameful historical flow stop!?       Leonid Yakovyshyn, from among all Ukrainians, each of whom you personally called President, addresses you, Mr. President of Ukraine, with respect and heartfelt sympathy. Therefore, I look forward to receiving an appropriate response: as President to the President's address