They Want to Destroy Us: Country's Family Farms Face a Battle for Survival

In a field outside this city in eastern Ukraine, Mykola Mondrayev, 55, is moving the wreckage of a Russian drone. A pickup truck mounted with a gun stands nearby, the only defense against the deadly unmanned aerial devices.

- Peter Beaumont

Three days a week Mondrayev serves with a territorial defense unit. The other four days he works his own fields.

His farm, he says, has not yet been struck by a drone, but although it is nearly 20 miles from the frontline he feels "uncomfortable" that it could become a target.

"The Russians aren't just hitting military objects. They're hitting farms as well," Mondrayev says. "Farming is at the heart of Ukraine culture and that's what they are trying to destroy."

On the steppes beyond Sumy, a rural way of life is under threat from the complex set of challenges that war has brought. A quarter of the country's farmland is under Russian occupation. Fields are contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance. Farmers and workers have taken on extra duties now as soldiers.

The impact of the war is underlined by the fact that before Russia's full-scale invasion agriculture was one of the fastest-growing sectors in Ukraine's economy, contributing 10.9% of GDP and providing 17% of domestic employment in 2021.

A military restriction zone forbids farmers in the immediate vicinity of the frontline from working their land, and farther back others have seen fields taken over for fortifications.