In 2019, the Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadoviy released a video on his facebook supporting the legalization and growth of marijuana: ‘Buy Ukrainian! This video was shot on the grounds of the legal hemp farm of the Glukhivsky region of Sumy.’ He notes the antioxidant and anti-stress qualities of hemp oil, and urged watchers to buy it.
The following text (original here) is translated from the telegram of ‘Whisperer - Ukraine War’. A classic Ukrainian political telegram, it deals in a variety of rumours, and the reader will note the somewhat hysterically conspiratorial tone of the text. In any case, the channel often posts some interesting stuff, and it is a fact that Zelensky legalized medical marijuana in February 2024, claiming it would help traumatized veterans.
As for the ‘Sorosites’ the following text refers to, it was the ultra-liberalnationalist (think Azov + Fukuyama) party Golos that registered the law project on medical marijuana in 2020. Golos and its ilk (‘Sorosites’) were also the strongest lobbyists for liberalization of agricultural land, such that foreigners would be able to buy Ukrainian farmland.
It is also a fact that Ukraine’s agriculture is highly ‘efficiently’ exploited by large transnational corporations (TCN), to the detriment of small farmers. I wrote about this in more detail in this three-part series of articles. And it is certainly true that Ukraine’s small scale producers have been squeezed out to the benefit of the world’s largest agroholdings. Here is an extract from one of my articles on the topic:
In 2017, two of Ukraine’s agroholdings were in the global top 20 list as ranked by amount of land controlled. NCH Capital, which evenly distributes its land in Russia and Ukraine, is in the top 10. Ukraine’s largest agroholding, Kernel, controlled 510 000 hectares of land in 2021. Kernel was planning to increase that to 700 000 after the ‘good news’ about Zelensky’s 2020 lifting of the moratorium on selling agricultural land. Kernel received $643 million of gross profit in the 2021 financial year, 5.2 times more than what it received in the previous year.
According to ‘Latifundist’, in 2021, the top 117 agroholdings in Ukraine directly controlled 6.45 million hectares of land, which is 16 per cent of all agricultural land, and 20 per cent of all arable land.
By comparison, no EU countries apart from Romania (not coincidentally one of the EU’s poorest members) have large agroholdings. In most countries, such as Germany, no single individual or company owns more than 30 000 hectares of land, while the average size of agricultural plots is 20 hectares. Due to the negative social, economic and ecological effects of domination of agriculture by large agroholdings, only poor, imperialized countries in South America, Asia and Africa have agroholdings comparable to those in Ukraine[1].
How much land do foreign agroholdings control?
According to Land Matrix’s 2021 report, Ukraine is second on the global list of the amount of land owned by foreigners – three million hectares. Only beaten by Indonesia, Ukraine was followed by Russia, Papua New Guinea and Brazil. Another study found that 15 per cent of Ukraine’s agricultural land is owned by foreigners, or almost 20 per cent of arable land.
However, these figures are likely an underestimate. Latifundist writes that only 10 foreign agroholdings control two to three million hectares. The largest were US companies – the biggest two controlled 300 000 and 195 000 hectares. One of the ways that foreign businesses get around restrictions on owning land in Ukraine is by buying it as collateral from a Ukrainian bank. This method has also hugely discounted Ukrainian land through the use of the western program ‘Prozorro’, which we will detail in our last article.
Another reason why foreigners own more than it seems is given by Ukrainian economic journalist Roman Gubrienko. He writes that 60-70 per cent of the land controlled by agroholdings is actually foreign owned, albeit with a token Ukrainian front. A 2023 report on Ukraine’s agriculture found that nine out of ten of Kernel’s top shareholders are European or American. Ukraine’s fourth largest investor in 2020 was Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, which owns shares in both Kernel and its competitor agroholding MHP. Blackrock and Goldman Sachs are some of the other big global financial groups heavily involved in Ukraine’s agriculture.
All that means that it certainly doesn’t seem outside of the scope of imagination that Ukraine’s fertile soil will provide a lucrative opportunity for the booming legal marijuana market, or that the Ukrainian government will use the matter to extract corruption rents.
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Ukraine as the Sorosites’ Cannabis China
Part 1
As the situation at the front gets worse and societal conflicts deepen, the Ze!team and the Sorosites use these issues as a cover for the "Great Cannabis Project." According to the plan, a significant portion of Ukraine's agricultural land, amidst the noise of war, will come under the control of transnational corporations and Ukrainian oligarchs loyal to them, subsequently transforming into cannabis plantations. Even by the most conservative estimates, restoring hemp cultivation in Ukraine to the levels of the 1980s, covering 100,000 hectares, would generate annual benefits of 100 billion USD. Moreover, the expansion of industrial hemp cultivation is planned—its profitability is estimated at an average of 100,000 USD per hectare. For comparison, the total agricultural export of Ukraine in the pre-war year of 2021 amounted to 27.8 billion USD, and the entire GDP of Ukraine in the same year was 199.8 billion USD.
The campaign to promote cannabis initiatives by the Bankova and transnational corporations in Ukraine has been intensifying since 2023, driven by the "Soros-bred" and media resources loyal to Zelensky. By 2024, the launch of the so-called "free cannabis cultivation market without licenses and permits" is planned. Participation in an electronic register notorious for corruption scandals by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and the transfer of control over seeds and products to government officials will be required.
The remnants of the electorate are being sold by the Ze!team on the "decriminalization" of cannabis as a Western-type legalization—a benevolent Zelensky has allowed the use of light drugs. For persuasiveness, figures acting as "conservative critics" express outrage on social networks that "libertarians of Zelensky have launched a genocide of Ukrainians by legalizing marijuana." Those playing the role of Ze's supporters engage in debates according to the manuals, claiming that all drug trafficking was "covered" by corrupt police officers, and therefore, criticism of the "cannabis initiatives" is the police's reluctance to lose one of their sources of income.
In reality, the Bankova does not plan any legalization. Another corruption feeding trough for the Ze!team is envisaged in the form of selling prescriptions for conditionally medical cannabis. An increase in state control over people is expected. Everyone who falls for the "liberalization of cannabis legislation" will be put in a "risk group." In fact, people will document themselves as "drug addicts," allowing Ze!team functionaries to manipulate such individuals in the future. Declare them incompetent, use recorded facts of cannabis use in commercial disputes, for extortion. Also, as those "limitedly fit for military service" were canceled in the corridors of the Ze!team, a regular review of the legality and justification of medical documents and prescriptions for cannabis is expected to regularly "treat" those involved in the subject.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs says that unlike the 1990s – early 2010s, "weed" is no longer a source of income for them. Because there are much more profitable and safe corruption themes, such as permits for the movement of agricultural machinery on roads, selling "admins" for drunk driving, internal corruption, ignoring violations by military personnel (including contract soldiers), etc.
Moreover, given the competition for "breadwinner positions," it is too risky to get pressed by the Department of Internal Security for "covering" cannabis—a "closure" of such an issue is costly. It is believed that if any of the "law enforcement officers" and "covers" specific "black markets of cannabis," then it is the SBU officers, but even for them, this is not the primary source of income. At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs understands that most likely, the Bankova will specifically employ police as a forceful instrument to ensure that "decriminalization of cannabis" fulfills the set task—to become an additional source of income for the desperately needy Ze!team. The question is how much of the collected "on the ground" will reach Kyiv in the current difficult situation.
Part 2
The most significant amounts and interests are associated with the "decriminalization of cannabis" in the agricultural sector. The administrative reform of Zelensky, the trend of "squeezing" land from farmers, and scandals around large state agricultural holdings are all linked to the topic of cultivating "medical" cannabis with a potential profit of 100 billion USD per year.
Key players in this theme are major Ukrainian landowners and transnational corporations. They control Ukrainian oligarchs—those who keep their main assets and savings in offshore and Western jurisdictions controlled by TNCs. Additionally, Zelensky, Yermak, and Zaluzhny have surreptitiously pledged Ukrainian land, including peasants, under loans with onerous interest rates for the war—with main creditors including the notorious BlackRock and other sponsors of globalist politicians previously loyal to the Bankova. This represents the second contour of TNC control over Ukrainian landowners—through indebted officials. Specifically, this involves the top ten landowners who will set the "cannabis" trend under the tune of foreign project curators. These include Andriy Verevskyi – the Luxembourg-based "Kernel" holding, Oleg Bakhmatyuk – "Ukrlandfarming," Yuriy Kosyuk – "Mironivsky Hliboproduct," the US corporation "Agprosperis," Astarta-Kyiv, the state corporation of Saudi Arabia, "Epicenter-Agro" of the Gerega clan, "Harvvest" by Rinat Akhmetov, "Ukrprominvest Agro" of the Poroshenko clan. The fact that some of these landowners use the land for poultry and livestock means nothing; they are ready to quickly switch to the much more profitable cultivation of "medical" cannabis. This will lead to a shortage of lands for livestock, poultry farming, and cultivation of other crops for the domestic market.
Therefore, Zelensky's administrative reform first touched the district areas of regions—officials administering a significant portion of agricultural lands. Also, the heads of regional state administrations, managing significant territories suitable for the cultivation of "medical" cannabis outside of settlements, are directly appointed by Zelensky and depend on Bankova. The task of all these functionaries is to ensure that the 100 billion from the "cannabis project" goes directly to TNCs—taxes and investments in Ukraine and Ukrainians are not initially planned.
The escalation of the corruption scandal about the illegal use of hundreds of thousands of hectares of state agricultural land by the Sorosites marks the start of a new phase in the fight for lands under the "cannabis project." Concurrently, private owners are forced to sell lands, in such a way that they can only sell to the state at a minimal price, and the state then resells it for dozens of times more—this ensures the feeding of officials supporting the "cannabis project."
The foundation of the project is the deprivation of ordinary Ukrainians' rights and freedoms. With the help of the war, ordinary citizens are turned into serfs—for any action disapproved by Bankova, Ukrainians are "rewarded" with the honorable opportunity to go to the front and quickly perish in the trenches. The war has shattered the economy, destroyed the energy sector, and deprived most people of the resource to defend their interests. The "digitalization" and construction of a concentration camp approved by Stefanchuk and Arahamia based on the Chinese "social credit" model failed and ended only in the embezzlement of budgets by the relevant Deputy Prime Minister Fedorov. However, the total impoverishment of Ukrainians as a result of the war has still transformed many into powerless, submissive serfs of the Chinese type. China was the "world's factory" because it had the opportunity to use low-paid, rights-deprived labor in factories. Ukraine is seen as the "world's cannabis granary," where the particular profitability of "medical" cannabis in the interests of TNCs will be ensured by using low-paid, rights-deprived local peasants and the total dependence of state structures on external factors.