Russia exports from the occupied regions of Ukraine not only grain, but also sunflower, the BBC Russian Service found out.

Announcements about the export of sunflower from Ukraine are published in a closed WhatsApp chat. "Seed. Chernigovka (Zaporozhye region). Rostov-on-Don. To carry a lot, cars for a circle”, “We provide transport escort. There are no fights and spans, calmly. There are Russian checkpoints everywhere. Cars are everywhere on the green,” the ads say.

The contacts of one of the ads contain the phone number of a Crimean businessman who specializes in cargo transportation. There are both Russian and Ukrainian numbers in the chat. The publication checked these numbers through GetContact and other similar services, and found out that they belong either to truck and grain truck drivers, or to the owners of a small trucking business.

Carriers are also searched in open Telegram chats to search for grain carriers. “[The seed] is not stolen, it is [the seed] controlled by the military-civilian administration. These are pure transactions, there is nothing like that. An officially purchased seed, ”writes a dispatcher from the Krasnodar Territory named Elena in one of the chats.

Sunflower seeds are exported to the Voronezh and Rostov regions, and to the Krasnodar Territory. In particular, transportation chats mention a plant in the Voronezh region, which is part of the Blago group, and enterprises of Russian agro-industrial groups - Yug Rusi in the Rostov region.

The publication notes that it is difficult to estimate the volume of exported sunflower. Probably part of the seeds is processed into oil at enterprises located directly in the occupied territories.

On July 27, researchers from Russia Theft Watch released a report that since the start of the war, Russia has stolen more than half a million tons of wheat, corn and barley from Ukraine, as well as more than 11,000 tons of steel products, totaling more than $166 million.