What Oleksandr Krasovskyy can’t quite get over about Russia’s latest strike on the dairy he manages is that it was carried out with cluster munitions.
“It seems like they were intent upon killing as many of the cows as possible,” he says, scrolling through photos and videos on his phone of dead and dying cows felled by the Iranian-made Shahed drones.
The attack in late May was the fourth on the Agroservice dairy in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Why We Wrote This
Ukrainians aren’t entirely sure why Russian drones have been targeting the dairy industry in Kharkiv. But over the last three years the region, Ukraine’s third-largest producer of milk in 2021, has lost half its herd of 33,000 cows.
The attack cost the dairy 107 cows and calves – more would die in the following days from explosion-induced stress. A direct strike on a milking barn in April had slaughtered 167 animals.
“Maybe they think we produce milk and meat for the Ukrainian army,” Mr. Krasovskyy says. “Some people think it’s because there’s an old [and inoperative] Soviet airstrip on this farm,” which sits about 40 miles from the Russian border.
“But I don’t think it’s as complicated as any of that,” he adds. “I just think they want to destroy everything they can.”
Whatever the explanation, Kharkiv’s dairies have been a particular focus of Russia’s attacks over the last three years. Ukraine’s third-largest producer of milk in 2021, the region shares a 200-mile-long border with Russia and has lost half its 33,000-cow herd since 2022.
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
Intensified Russian attacks
For months, most of the attention paid to the Ukraine war has focused on Russia’s intensifying attacks on cities and civilian infrastructure – including the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest, just 20 miles from the Russian border.
In recent weeks Russia has launched the largest aerial attacks of its full-scale invasion on a half-dozen cities including Kharkiv, damaging and destroying high-rise residential buildings.
On July 4 Russia pummeled Kyiv with a barrage of drone and missile strikes that commenced shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up a phone call with Russia President Vladimir Putin. The strikes killed one person and destroyed residential buildings.
This week Russia unleashed the largest aerial attack of the war, sending 728 drones and 13 cruise missiles in multiple waves targeting cities across the country. No one was killed in the attacks Wednesday, but in June an overnight attack focused on Kyiv left 28 people dead and buildings destroyed.
The attacks, which blatantly skip military targets, seem squarely aimed at disheartening and terrorizing the civilian population, as public officials including mayors and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insist.
But why Kharkiv’s dairies?
Ukraine’s Association of Milk Producers says the attacks on dairies are part of a wider Russian “scorched earth” campaign to destroy economic activity and make life impossible.
“By destroying the facilities that are usually located in villages around Kharkiv, Russia leaves people without places to work,” says Olena Zhupinas, the association’s deputy director. “Unable to make a living, people move out.”
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
Another apparent aim is to undermine food security – in Ukraine and ultimately the world. The association notes that Ukraine is historically a major producer of food – in particular grains and cooking oils – for developing countries. About a quarter of Ukraine’s milk production is exported.
Kharkiv oblast had 30 dairy enterprises before the war. Now there are fewer than half that number, officials say.
Is it simply envy?
Some dairy workers note the intimate connection between milk and nurturing generations of young people – and a strong Ukraine – and wonder if that explains Russia’s targeted attacks.
Others point to Kharkiv’s history as an innovator of dairy production and speculate that a laggard Russia aims to deprive Ukraine of the state-of-the-art dairy industry it doesn’t have.
“I think they know what we have here and they are envious,” says Viktor, owner of the Agrosvit group of dairies in Kharkiv. He withholds his last name over security concerns. “They know we have advanced farming and milk-producing technology that they don’t have,” he adds, “so they don’t want us to have it, either.”
Viktor says his dairy was held by Russian soldiers for a few weeks in 2022, and during that time his workers reported hearing the soldiers marveling about the farm they were occupying in phone calls to family back home.
“They said, ‘You can’t believe their barns have windows and heated places for the cows, they’re nothing like the [filthy] sties we call farms at home,’” he says.
The soldiers lived in his farmhouse while they occupied the dairy, “and when they left they took the appliances and other things they don’t have at home,” Victor says.
“But they can’t pick up the dairy and take it with them, so instead they destroy it. That’s what they are doing now,” he adds, “they are destroying the infrastructure that gives people their essential things, like shelter and food. That’s it.”
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
At Agrosvit’s dairy outside Kutuzivka village, Olha Babich presents the unique history of the dairy she oversees – a history some say helps explain why Russians now seem set on the farm’s destruction.
“On this dairy we have what we call the Soviet side and the American side,” she says, “where more modern buildings and milking practices were introduced.”
The Khrushchev connection
Indeed in 1959 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited farms in Iowa, drawn by American agricultural productivity and showing a particular interest in dairy and corn production. The visit resulted in the introduction of American dairy equipment and methods to some farms in Ukraine – including what is now Agrosvit’s Kutuzivka dairy.
Whether the dairy’s history has played any role in its targeting remains a mystery, but the attacks here have seemed particularly vengeful. The “modern” barns of the American side have had their roofs collapsed and windows blown out. Of the dairy’s onetime high of 2,400 milking cows, more than 1,000 have been killed.
“I know some feel otherwise, but in my view the Russians are not so sophisticated or intentional as to target us for some philosophical or historical reason,” says Oleksandr Blyzniuk, the dairy’s manager. “I just think they see something that is alive and working, and so they strike it.”
Knowing from experience that they and their place of employment are targets can make their jobs stressful, the dairies’ workers say. But on the other hand, some say that the rhythms of a dairy – the need for cows to be milked, the regular arrival of new life in the calves born there – are calming and reassuring, especially in the midst of war.
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
“One of our guys quit after a drone hit not 15 meters from him, and I can’t say I blame him,” says Agroservice’s Mr. Krasovskyy. “It’s painful for all of us when we lose the cows, but at some point we have to ask ourselves, ‘Can we continue to risk people’s lives?’”
Still, he says the dairy gives him an essential sense of purpose. “Most of us feel like, this is our role, this is how we contribute,” he says.
The affable, barrel-chested dairy manager singles out one barn in the initial stages of reconstruction. “We’re just starting to put a new roof on that one,” he says, “and already I’m thinking, what happens when we finish it?”
The talk around Kharkiv’s dairies is that the Russians keep track of such reconstruction projects on satellite imagery, waiting to hit again when the rebuilding is finished.
“And maybe that’s true, who knows?” says Mr. Krasovskyy. “But what else can we do? We’re going to put on the new roof.”
Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in the reporting for this story.
