Ukraine's farmers will face many of the grave dangers as soldiers as they reap this year's harvest amid Russia's war on its neighbour
ZELENODILSK, Ukraine — Their uniforms are dusty jeans and tank-tops, and they drive tractors, not tanks, along the front line in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
But Ukrainian farmers face many of the same grave dangers as soldiers as they reap this year’s harvest. Across Ukraine, Russian artillery and mines have killed tractor drivers. Thousands of acres of ripe wheat have burned from strikes. Fields are pockmarked where incoming shells have left craters.
Serhiy Sokol, a wheat, barley and sunflower farmer in southern Ukraine, said he and his farmhands plucked dozens of aluminum tubes from Russian rockets from the black earth as they worked his fields. Last month, he said, a neighbor’s combine harvester ran over a mine, blowing off one of its fat tires but sparing the driver.
“There were a lot of cluster munitions in the fields,” Sokol said with a shrug. “We just risked it, and thank God nobody was hurt.”
After all Sokol’s troubles, with his barley crop drying in storage, a Russian artillery shell hit his silo. A dozen or so tons of grain burned.
©2019 New York Times News Service