[By Guancha Network Columnist Anton Nilman, Translated by Kaihuan Xue]
In May, the notable dynamics in Ukraine's economic and social sectors were as follows: In terms of the economy, the state seed reserve fund was abolished, leading to the collapse of the seed industry and a sharp rise in dependence on imported agricultural seeds. The US-Ukraine mineral agreement was approved, reducing Ukraine to a level of being exploited by the US like a colony. In military industry, some officials claimed production potential had greatly increased, but the authenticity of these data is questionable.
Meanwhile, the authorities launched a privatization plan for "State Services," selling off public services. Throughout May, Ukraine faced severe unemployment, trade restrictions, a huge fiscal deficit, and climbing public debt. The authorities also introduced a series of stringent conscription measures, making social issues even more complex.
Abolition of the State Seed Reserve Fund
In June 2003, former First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Nicolai Azarov, signed Resolution No. 977, establishing the State Seed Reserve Fund. Its purpose was to establish seed reserves to meet the needs of regions without seed production and provide assistance to legal entities and individuals engaged in agricultural production during natural disasters or similar situations, ensuring variety renewal, replacement, and seed trading based on international agreements.
However, recently, Ukrainian authorities passed Resolution No. 403, declaring Resolution No. 977 invalid and abolishing the State Seed Reserve Fund established by Azarov. This initiative was initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture and received overall support from the authorities. Reasons cited for abolition included high costs of preserving and updating seeds, which were deemed unnecessary, and the belief that with technological advancements, there was no need to store seeds, as they could be quickly obtained from other sources.
From a certain perspective, the motives of Ukraine's Ministry of Agriculture are not unreasonable: the fund indeed became "unnecessary." The issue lies in how the fund was pushed to such an extent that its abolition process did not even attract attention from Ukraine's professional agricultural media.
When initially established, the fund reserved 24,500 tons of seeds for staple crops such as wheat, barley, rye, triticale, corn, oats, peas, buckwheat, sunflower, and millet, with its storage structure closely related to its intended use. However, since 2014, the role of the fund gradually diminished, and its financial situation drastically worsened after 2020. Funds dropped from 17 million Ukrainian hryvnias in 2020 to 1 million in 2024, and staff decreased from 9 in 2022 to 3 in 2024. Overall, the Kiev authorities considered the fund unnecessary and shut it down. To support farmers and provide seeds, the authorities turned to help from non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations.
Comparison of Ukrainian grain and sunflower oil exports in 2024 and 2021 (unit: ten thousand tons)
Now, multinational corporations will become the main source of crop seeds supplied to Ukraine. For instance, on April 18, 2025, Ukraine's Ministry of Agriculture signed an agreement with German company Bayer, launching a program to provide seeds to agricultural producers from frontline areas. Farmers cultivating between 5 to 500 hectares of land can receive hybrid corn seeds sufficient for planting 25 hectares, while the rest of the land requires them to obtain seeds independently.
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Ukrainian government has provided 810 tons of vegetable and staple crop seeds through the Ministry of Agriculture and various projects, but this figure is only one-thirtieth of the initial reserve quantity set by the State Seed Reserve Fund.
Even though the seed aid provided to farmers is clearly insufficient, compared to the comprehensive collapse of the seed industry management system, this issue remains secondary. As part of the infrastructure supporting the development of agriculture and its core—the seed industry—this fund once played a crucial role. Now, Ukraine not only loses relevant infrastructure but also the foundation of the industry has vanished.
The usual practice of Ukraine's National Academy of Agrarian Sciences (NAAS) is to lease its land reserves to agricultural holding companies under its name. The most prominent example is Nauchnaya Agricultural Company (Russian meaning "Science"), a farm enterprise controlled by the NAAS.
This company contracted 25,000 hectares of arable land in the 1990s and also managed a distillery and a dairy plant. In 2004, Ukraine's famous oligarch group Privat Financial-Industrial Group (Privat Group) followed the traditional "excellent tradition" of oligarchs, using its Privat Bank to bankrupt Nauchnaya, implementing a classic asset grab. The "rescue" of this agricultural company was supposed to take only 12 months but lasted nearly 20 years. During this period, "Privat" continuously profited from Nauchnaya, acquiring 14,500 hectares of its land. In 2022, the company's revenue reached 140 million hryvnias.
Therefore, the Kiev authorities hope to learn from the oligarchs, seize as much land as possible from the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences for sale, and then channel the proceeds into the national budget, where these funds will ultimately be embezzled by those who turn war into a "high-profit business"—this is no longer a novel phenomenon in today's Ukraine.
The plant gene bank of the Kharkiv Yurev Botanical Garden once preserved 74,000 plant samples; it suffered severe damage in the early days of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and no longer exists. This botanical garden never received adequate attention or financial support from the authorities before the war. Now, Ukraine has no seed bank of its own.
Abandoned farms in Ukraine
With the disappearance of the state seed reserve fund, the last national mechanism supporting farmers in purchasing seeds has disappeared. Clearly, the Kiev authorities do not care about long-term plans for agricultural development. Now, to revive Ukraine's planting industry, everything must start anew, slowly rebuilding mechanisms and institutions that were used to support agriculture, which could have been retained and reformed according to modern actual needs.
With the demise of the state seed reserve fund, Ukraine's dependence on imported agricultural seeds has nearly reached 100%, and Russia’s example has already shown us the serious consequences this may bring to the country.
In 2022, many "unfriendly countries" of Russia terminated contracts with Russian companies citing force majeure, ceasing the supply of seeds. Although these supply sources later returned to the Russian market, seed prices doubled, and despite the strengthening of the ruble, prices were not adjusted.
Aware of the severity of depending on imported seeds, the Russian government took a series of measures. It established a scientific center for seed industry development, integrating multiple related institutions and formulating a federal science and technology plan, providing funding and preferential loans to breeding experts.
Starting September 1, 2023, Russia implemented new "Crop Seed Production Localization Rules." According to the new regulations, foreign seed suppliers wishing to operate within Russia must form joint ventures with Russian partners (with foreign shareholding not exceeding 49% and requiring the transfer of foreign breeding seeds to Russians). At the same time, domestic breeders must have production facilities within Russia. The Russian government also forced foreign companies to achieve seed production localization through import quotas or even import bans. The quota system came into effect in 2024.
Preliminary results show that over the past three years, the self-sufficiency rate of sunflower seeds in Russia has doubled, increasing from 23% in 2021 to 46% in 2024. Domestic soybean seeds now cover more than 50% of the planting area, and rapeseed seeds account for approximately 40%.
The Russian Ministry of Agriculture plans to increase the proportion of domestically produced seeds to 75% by 2030, ideally completely eliminating imports. Seeds produced in Russia and registered patents with foreign companies must complete full-cycle production within Russia. Russia's seed banks are located in St. Petersburg and Kuban, and since 2012, Russia has been constructing the Yakutsk Federal Seed Cryopreservation Bank in phases, built by the Siberian Branch Institute of Permafrost Research, becoming a facility replacing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Additionally, "Donetsk People's Republic" is also conducting relevant work. To complete the comprehensive reconstruction plan of the Donetsk Botanical Garden, the region will launch a plant micro-cloning reproduction laboratory (test-tube cloning) this year, modernize the research base of the botanical garden, and build a greenhouse complex for plant cultivation.
Russia's efforts in seed industry infrastructure, specialized talent, and measures required for seed industry development are evident. For Ukrainians, this is an ironic situation: the long-term mismanagement of the Kiev authorities has led to significant losses in agriculture. However, agriculture in areas implementing Russian agricultural policies can recover faster.
US-Ukraine Mineral Agreement
On the night of April 30, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada approved the "US-Ukraine Mineral Agreement." Clearly, this deal offers no benefit to Ukraine, although members of the Ukrainian cabinet attempted to convince the public otherwise. To ensure the approval process was not disrupted, iron fences were pre-installed around the parliament building, and Zelensky even appealed to the US to sanction MPs who made "wrong choices" in the Verkhovna Rada vote, as several MPs associated with the detained oligarch Igor Kolomoisky abstained from voting.
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada quickly approved amendments to the Ukrainian budget bill, which was necessary to initiate the "mineral agreement." The speed at which the amendments were passed indicates that the US has broken through resistance from the Kiev authorities on this issue, or that Zelensky and his inner circle have abandoned the "mineral agreement" as a key issue and are instead trying to focus their efforts on undermining peace negotiations and rejecting peace positions.
On May 12, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (parliament) released a message on its official website stating that President Zelensky signed a presidential decree approving the agreement on establishing the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund (the "mineral agreement").
Kiev authorities guarantee that Ukraine will earn approximately 3 billion hryvnias over the next five years through this agreement. However, the more accurate question is how much tax revenue Ukraine will lose over the coming years due to the "mineral agreement."
Accepting the terms of the agreement will bring a series of consequences:
Firstly, Ukraine will become a level akin to Iraq or Afghanistan during the American occupation, where governments were also subjected to "mineral trading" or similar arrangements.
For Russians, this is not surprising; they have always held extreme skepticism towards the actions of the Kiev authorities. But for some Ukrainians, this will be "big news." Media controlled by the authorities attempted to make Ukrainians believe that handing over mineral resources to Americans is a "great blessing," arguing that local enterprises in Ukraine manage these resources inadequately. Of course, whether this propaganda will actually work and convince Ukrainians to believe their narrative remains to be seen.
Secondly, the signing of the mineral agreement marks Zelensky's agreement to the US-driven plundering of Ukraine, in exchange for continued fighting against Russia, ensuring his power is maintained.
In short, Zelensky, in wartime, handed over Ukraine's mineral resources to the US occupation to gain external legitimacy for continuing the war. Whether this will provide him with additional external legitimacy remains uncertain, depending on Trump's acceptance of Russia's demands and his willingness to fulfill them.
Thirdly, the US will exploit Ukraine according to a purely colonial model. The US-Ukraine mineral agreement offers no benefits to Ukraine: at least over the next 10 years, it will channel the funds from Ukraine's resource sales directly to Washington. The fund will be offshore-registered domestically in the US, and the Kiev authorities are helpless in this process.
The agreement has yet to be implemented, with compliance reviews and other official procedures still ahead. Gradually, we will discover that any agreement reached between the US and the Kiev authorities will only be temporary because both sides can potentially renege at any moment.
Anti-Russian Books
The anti-corruption organization Bigus.Info, funded by Western sources, released an investigation in May stating that the Ukrainian publisher Credo, registered in Kiev, operated in the Russian market until 2021 through the Russian company Fortuna (Russian meaning "fortune"), and the founders of Credo were registered as individual entrepreneurs in Rostov-on-Don at that time, when they held Russian citizenship.
This "terrible crime" was unforgivable for Ukraine's minority neo-Nazis, sparking a scandal. The Ukrainian National Television and Radio Commission responsible for registering book sellers will remove "Credo" and "Bebibuk" (both owned by Russian citizens) from the registry, halting their operations. Some participants in the book market also joined the boycott of the publishers. The bookstore chain "Y" stopped cooperating with Credo and removed its books from shelves.
Meanwhile, the publisher "Apricot Publishing" in Dnipro decided to destroy the inventory of the children's book "Dream House" because the author posted updates on social media in Russian. The author, Julianna Karaman, a Ukrainian-British resident in Scotland, shared a video of someone reading her book in Russian in Russia (the book was originally written in Russian). The publisher claimed they "did not fully pay attention to the author's public activities."
Julianna Karaman
"Defense Development"
Ukrainian Minister of Strategic Industries, Herman Semetani, stated that last year, the production potential of Ukraine's military-industrial complex grew from $12 billion to $35 billion, capable of producing more than 30% of the weapons and ammunition used by Ukraine against Russia.
According to Semetani, the scale of Ukraine's military-industrial complex expanded sixfold last year, with the ability to produce 2.5 million mortars and artillery shells annually, along with an equivalent number of drone munitions. However, the authenticity of such claims is questionable: such data would be classified in peacetime, let alone during wartime.
I personally cannot understand the significance of calculating industrial production potential in dollar costs: you can produce a 152mm shell for $500 or $1,000, entirely depending on how you "define" production costs. Therefore, the figures announced by Semetani do not reflect the actual production levels of Ukraine's military-industrial complex; rather, they reflect the mindset of officials, reminiscent of the old days of mindless "money burning." Semetani's statements should be interpreted as follows: Ukraine's military-industrial complex can "digest" $35 billion and double its "burning money" capability within a year.
In contrast to the "strong military production capacity," Ukraine's tax authorities are struggling to keep up with the military department's pace of "burning money": MP Zherelnyak has repeatedly warned that military spending is insufficient and requires an emergency raise of 200 billion hryvnias.
To readers familiar with my previous articles, this may sound familiar: Kiev authorities have been struggling for three consecutive years to fill "budget gaps." This year, the EU will assist by taking 2 billion euros from frozen Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves profits for Ukraine. Combined with previous aid grants, the nominal amount of military funds available to Kiev authorities exceeds 3.3 billion euros.
Next year, Minister Semetani will undoubtedly again measure Ukraine's military capabilities in dollars, reporting another "significant improvement," which can be seen as another new trick in Zelensky's "give me money!" begging.
Privatization of "State Services"
Ukraine's Digital Transformation Ministry has initiated a privatization plan for "Diya" (Ukraine's "State Service" website and app), planning to split it into independent companies and conduct an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
From a profitability perspective, transforming "Diya" into a privatized market platform seems logical. First, the application was developed by multinational IT company EPAM rather than Ukraine's Digital Transformation Ministry, based on Western IT technology. Second, such service operations are costly: hiring professionals (developers, testers, cybersecurity experts, etc.), acquiring server resources, and software licenses, among others. Third, in the current reality where Kiev authorities constantly push privatization, combining government services with commercial operations looks "very reasonable."
However, from a national perspective, the commercialization of such important government services is unacceptable, especially given their future plan to go public, transforming into a listed company and listing on the stock exchange. While "Diya," under state control, despite some security flaws (servers located outside Ukraine, developed by foreign companies, closely tied to Google), still fulfills the role of simplifying interactions between citizens and the government, its services will prioritize profit after commercialization, no longer considering whether they are convenient for the public. Profit is the primary goal for listed companies, with everything else secondary.
From this perspective, "Diya" has numerous ways to make money after privatization, from selling ad spaces to various "priority processing" and "simplified document handling" services. These services can be graded and priced for the public, exacerbating the gap in efficiency between different classes, thereby widening wealth disparities. Additionally, after privatization, "Diya" will inevitably expand private sector and third-party access to service infrastructure, increasing its vulnerability and raising the risk of personal data breaches.
By comparison, Russia's "State Service" (Gosuslugi) was established in 2009, about ten years earlier than Ukraine's. Russia's "State Service" is regulated by Russia's Digital Transformation Ministry, with project clients being Russia's state-owned telecommunications company PJSC Rostelecom, and the execution carried out by IT company NVision Group, part of Russia's telecom giant MTSS.
Russia's "State Service" has 112 million registered users. The Russian government has no intention of privatizing the "State Service." The goal of the Russian Digital Transformation Ministry is to stop storing any data within the "State Service" and instead directly store data in department databases, providing government services through electronic interaction systems. This will enhance the "State Service's" resilience to hacker attacks because hackers would need to breach dozens of nodes rather than just one.
Diya App initiates privatization plan
Other News
Since the beginning of 2025, 250,000 people in Ukraine have become unemployed, of which 82% are women. This number does not indicate laziness among Ukrainian women but reflects the impact of the war on the labor market: men neither register nor dare to register at employment agencies, which is why the unemployment problem exhibits a "feminization" characteristic.
Kiev authorities estimate that tightening trade systems with the EU and reimposing quota systems for Ukrainian products exported to the EU will result in an annual fiscal loss of 3.5 billion euros. Corn exporters will be hit hardest, as their exports to the EU will drop from 14 million tons to 650,000 tons, and sugar exports will also be halved. By the way, Ukrainian corn is losing ground to American corn in the global market, with American corn prices per ton dropping to about $20.
The EU announced the need to find an additional 10 billion euros to supplement gas storage facilities, bringing their filling rate to 90%. Increasing storage standards is not only for safety reasons but also because the EU must supply gas to Ukraine, which currently faces a fuel shortfall of up to 5 billion cubic meters.
In the first four months of this year, Ukraine's public debt grew by 7.3% in hryvnias and by 8.4% in foreign currencies, exceeding 7.48 trillion hryvnias or $180 billion. Meanwhile, the authorities are requesting an additional $500 million in aid from the International Monetary Fund, clearly showing no intention of addressing the debt issue.
Now, Ukrainians must have a military ID to apply for university admission. Applicants' military IDs or other proof documents must be submitted to the admissions committee in paper or electronic form. Starting June 5, police will be able to detain men unable to pass physical exams due to military service obligations and send them to military registration and recruitment offices. In short, police have finally been granted explicit permission to "draft" men on the streets, although they have effectively been doing so for some time.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Justice stated that for those who evade military service by failing to pay fines, after initiating enforcement procedures, their property and housing may be confiscated. Such declarations are not new, but the important point is that jointly owned property of evaders may also be forcibly executed. If the fine amount exceeds 20 times the minimum monthly wage, the sole residence or land plot of an evader may also be forcibly executed. Those opposing Zelensky's delusion of "fighting until the last Ukrainian" and seeking to save themselves and their families should take note of this.
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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7510436594172625459/
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