Croatia made a record contribution to help Ukrainian farmers

The government of Croatia has allocated 1 million euros to the UN World Food Program to help Ukrainian farmers, as well as to speed up the recovery of food producers. According to the World Food Program of the United Nations, this contribution is the largest in the history of Croatia's donation to the World Food Program of the United Nations. The funds will be used to support a joint demining project.

The project is aimed at surveying agricultural lands for the presence of mines and other explosive objects, demining them if necessary and safely releasing them to restore food production and support the livelihoods of rural communities. Work is already underway in the Kharkiv region. It is planned to expand the project to the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions.

By the way, recently Zagreb and Kyiv were able to agree on the use of Croatian ports for the export of grain from Ukraine, and the allies also want to help with the implementation of the peace plan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that it is too early to share details, but we can say that concrete agreements have been reached. The representatives of the countries also discussed the international donor conference on demining Ukraine, which will be held in Zagreb in October.

We would like to remind you that the right to demine agricultural land in Ukraine can be purchased at an auction - Ukraine is launching a market for humanitarian demining, which involves the purchase of services through auctions to attract domestic and foreign private operators. As the First Vice Prime Minister - Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yuliya Svyridenko reported, the first demining auction is planned for August. She emphasized the importance of accelerating the entry of new players into the market, including the certification of operators. Yulia Svyridenko also emphasized that the certification process should last up to three weeks. According to her, in order to ensure such a high speed, specialists of the Ministry of Economy, as well as other departments, are currently analyzing documents for their further updating, cancellation or digitization.

We will remind that due to the actions of the Russian occupiers, Ukraine has become the most mined country in the world, so experts claim that clearing its agricultural lands of explosives will be long and expensive. As the Washington Post writes, in a year and a half of full-scale war, land mines, along with unexploded bombs and artillery shells, polluted the territory of Ukraine roughly the size of Florida or Uruguay. According to munitions experts, demining on this scale is almost unique and could take hundreds of years and billions of dollars to resolve. Analysts note that the amount of ammunition in Ukraine is unprecedented in the last 30 years. Experts report that about 30% of Ukraine has been affected by heavy fighting and will require lengthy, expensive and dangerous clean-up operations.