Miratorg pig farm sustains artillery strike

“As a result of the shelling, 3 employees were injured – 2 women and 1 man”, the company said in a statement. “They were provided with all the necessary medical care.”

15 artillery shells fired

On social media channel Telegram, Russian news outlet Baza reported that, in total, 15 artillery shells were fired in the direction of the SK Krapivna. Several buildings of the pig farm were hit. The injured employees have mine explosive wounds on their arms and legs.

Not the first time

This is not the first time that a pig farm in Russia has been hit during cross-border shelling. In April, an Agro-Belogorie pig farm in Belgorod region was damaged by artillery shelling, killing 178 pigs. Following that specific incident, the Belgorod government allocated 1 billion roubles (US$ 12 million) to compensate for the total amount of losses in the entire region due to the shelling.

Repeated attacks

Russian pig farmers have been expressing concerns over a possible escalation of the fights on the Russia-Ukraine border. At the end of 2022, Russian pig company RusAgro disclosed it prepared a plan for the operation of its Belgorod assets if the fights would transfer to the Russian ground. The Belgorod region accounts for roughly 20% of Russian pork production. This is about 930,000 tonnes per year. It borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in the south.

Not only pig farms suffer from cross-border shelling. Russian lysine manufacturer Premix plant number 1 sustained a missile strike on May 31, Russian news channel Shot reported on Telegram, adding that the facility caught fire as a result. No information pertaining to the scale of the destructions was disclosed.

Premix’ plant number 1 manufactures around 80,000 tonnes of feed lysine per year, meeting more than half of the demand in the Russian market. It is not clear whether the production was disrupted.

Mounting costs

Ukrainian authorities refrain from commenting on the cross-border shelling. The country’s own agriculture has also suffered a lot, estimates by the Kyiv School of Economics showed in May 2023 that due to the hostilities, direct and indirect losses amount to US $ 40.2 billion.

In the first months of fights, Ukraine lost 10% to 15% of the production capacities in the pig industry, a local pig farmers association estimated. One of the farms hit was Agrocomplex Sloboshanzky.