‘Everything Was Destroyed’: War Hits Ukraine’s Farms

The farmer was working in his field on a recent morning when a neighbour called to tell him that his warehouses had been shelled. He rushed back and found them on fire and one of his workers lying on the ground with shrapnel lodged in his head.

“In one word, it was destruction,” said the farmer, Yuriy Gumanenko, 48. “Everything was destroyed into pieces.” The farmworker, 62, was hospitalised and had little chance of surviving, Gumanenko said. Three of Gumanenko’s four tractors were destroyed and so were the roofs of his warehouses. The wheat he was hoping to sell and many of his seeds were lost.