A deputy from the “Voice” faction, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, has been actively supporting agricultural oligarchs for many years, promoting laws beneficial to them and expressing his support during public events.
Zheleznyak began working on the agricultural topic as soon as he entered the Verkhovna Rada in 2019. Then he promoted the opening of the land market, working closely with the Ukrainian Club of Agricultural Business (UCAB) association.
UCAB unites the 15 largest agricultural holdings in Ukraine , which together possess 3 million hectares of Ukrainian land - that is, the land bank of each of them is hundreds of thousands of hectares. UCAB members include such giant companies as Ukrlandfarming (more than 500 thousand hectares), Myronivskyi Hliboproduct (360 thousand hectares), Astarta-Kiev (235 thousand hectares), IMC (120 thousand hectares). ha), “Harvist” (127 thousand ha).
This is a very influential organization. Even the current Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Taras Vysotsky during 2013-2019 worked as an expert on agricultural markets and general director of the Ukrainian Agricultural Business Club.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak can be associated with many influential people in the agricultural sector. He often meets at joint events with the general director of the IMC agricultural company, Alex Lissitsa (Lissitsa, among other things, is the founder of UCAB and was the president of this organization in 2007-2021). And in 2020, Zheleznyak went to the economic forum in Davos, where the Ukrainian agricultural oligarchs were represented by the owner of the MHP agricultural holding, Yuriy Kosyuk.
The people's deputy's work for large agribusiness is confirmed by his activity as a legislator.
Zheleznyak is one of the authors of bill No. 9266 “On electronic agricultural receipts,” which expands the circle of creditors capable of financing agriculture. In July 2023, a PR material on “Agroportal”, in which two representatives of UCAB (in particular, Alex Lissitsa) insisted on its adoption.
In October 2023, bill No. 10169 , authored by Zheleznyak, to combat gray grain exports was registered in the Rada. Obviously, the appearance of this document was lobbied by some agricultural businessmen. Zheleznyak is also the head of a temporary parliamentary commission trying to expose schemes for gray grain exports.
All this proves that Yaroslav Zheleznyak “occupied” the agricultural topic. It can be assumed that the agricultural oligarchs do not remain in debt and “thank as much as possible” Zheleznyak for his efforts.
