Russian troops are taking milk and food from farms they are capturing in south Ukraine, according to a Ukrainian farmer.

Andrij Pastuschenko, a farmer 20km south of the city of Kherson, told the Irish Farmers Journal his farm was captured by Russian soldiers on Monday.

“Russian troops have captured our farm. [They] drove out the guards, took two cars, took a lot of milk and food.

“They warned they were coming to us today with great force and [said they] would be based on our farm. They took milk. We had bread, eggs, butter, sour cream and cheese. They took everything we made ourselves.”

The dairy farmer said Russian soldiers are “looking for food and alcohol” and said farms with “fields and tractors are not so interesting to them”.

Milk and food from the farm was distributed to local people, seen here queuing.

Pastuschenko said no one was killed during the Russian advance on his farm. He said there are a number of employees left looking after the farm’s 750 cattle including 350 milking cows, now under supervision by Russian soldiers.

“There are several employees [left] but I’m not sure if the female [workers] will come to work [this] evening. Everyone is very afraid.

“The Russians are now on the farm. They know that the Ukrainian army will not attack them at a [farm] where there are always many workers.”

Farm

Pastuschenko’s now Russian-occupied farm has 1,500ha of arable land and he runs a milking herd of 350 Holstein Friesians and 400 followers.

“Before the war, [we produced] over 10t of milk per day [or] 31.5l per cow, per day. Now we only feed corn silage and alfalfa to the cows and report 5.5-6t,” he said.

He said that “in the first five days of the war, a milk truck came from Kherson and picked up 4t of milk and took it to all the hospitals in the city and distributed the leftovers to the people”.

He said Kherson has been “occupied and encircled” and “no car is allowed in and out”, blocking the farm’s access to the milk processor.

Smoke from a missile strike on Andrij Pastuschenko's farm.

Pastuschenko said that before the Russians captured the farm, they were producing “butter, cottage cheese [and] cream in the barn”. He described how farm employees were crushing barley and that from this, porridge could be cooked.

Evacuation

Pastuschenko said his wife Liudmyla and the youngest of his two sons, Matwii, age nine, are staying in Zhytomyr, a city 100km north of Kyiv. He said that he and his second son are “trying to evacuate [in] the direction of Germany”.

The Ukrainian farmer described how the farm is slaughtering dairy animals to feed its employees.

“When I [will] leave, the cows and other animals are stolen and slaughtered by the hungry people. We do this now, too, but only one cow every two days because of meat for our own employees.

“If the Russians stay here or make a People’s Republic like Donetzk or Luhansk here, I will leave my house and drive away. I will never live and work among occupiers. I am a free and proud person.”