Russian Oligarch Seizes 400,000 Acres of Ukrainian Farmland, Owners Say

Soon after Russian tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine, three of that country’s biggest farming operators lost tracts of land equivalent to more than twice the area of New York City.

It wasn’t taken by the military. In all three cases, leaders of the Ukrainian farming operations say, the land ended up in the hands of the family company of a former Russian agriculture minister, Alexander Tkachev.