Jason Melanovski
While the government of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has become embroiled in a political crisis between President Donald Trump and the Democrats in the United States, in its domestic policies Zelensky’s administration has continued to move forward with plans to privatize and sell off many state-owned enterprises and much of the country’s land area to wealthy speculators.
Zelensky ordered the Ukrainian Parliament to submit a bill regarding land reform with a goal to open the country’s land market on December 1, 2019. Last week, the newly appointed Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk set out a definitive timeline to open Ukraine’s land market on October 1, 2020, regardless of the bill’s outcome.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its state-owned farms, a moratorium on the private sale of arable farm land was enacted in 2001. Despite rabid opposition from Western imperialism, the moratorium on sales of farm land has been renewed 10 times, most recently in December 2018.
In August 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the Ukrainian government’s ban on the sale of agricultural land, declaring that it violated “human rights” and was illegal according to the European Convention on Human Rights.
The opening of the Ukrainian agricultural land market to investors has long been a goal of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank: it has featured in its loan agreements with Ukraine ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine, long known as the “bread basket” of Europe, has an estimated 32 million hectares of arable land. By comparison, Germany—which has roughly double the population of Ukraine—has just 12 million hectares of arable land. In addition, Ukraine is home to 54 percent of the world’s “black earth” soil, which is particularly valuable because it is highly fertile and can easily grow a multitude of crops such as grains, cereals and oilseeds.
Global warming will further increase the value of Ukraine’s land. A 2014 World Bank report titled Ukraine: Soil Fertility to Strengthen Climate Resilience noted that Ukraine, which faces significant issues due to soil erosion and increased droughts due to global warming, has a “highly competitive advantage” relative to other agricultural areas under warming conditions due to its “advantageous geographical location” and “its proximity to large and growing neighboring markets—the Russian Federation and the European Union.”
The IMF and Ukraine’s Western imperialist creditors view the opening of Ukraine’s land market as a priceless opportunity for foreign investors to buy the country’s highly valued fertile “black earth” at rock-bottom prices in comparison with land prices in their own countries.
Zelensky’s proposed outline for agricultural reform seeks to ensure that the Ukrainian bourgeoisie will not be cut out entirely by the interests of imperialism. It is aimed at enabling Ukrainian oligarchs to purchase the land for themselves or function as intermediaries for Western investors. Only Ukrainian citizens or Ukrainian legal entities will be permitted to buy and sell land. Foreign companies and citizens will only be able to purchase land through Ukrainian legal entities.
The opening up of Ukraine’s agriculture to foreign capital is part of a large-scale program of privatization that will entail mass layoffs and far-reaching attacks on the living standards of the working class.
During the same announcement on September 2 that calls for the adoption of land reform, Zelensky tasked Honcharuk with transferring at least 500 state-owned enterprises to a State Property Fund, from which they will then be sold off at auction to the highest bidders.
Making clear that the jobs of tens of thousands of workers will be on the line, the cabinet announced on Monday, September 30: “More than 1,000 inefficient enterprises will be liquidated. The state will no longer spend taxpayers’ funds to support inefficient loss-making enterprises.”
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