On March 20, 2026, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine submitted an indictment against Volodymyr Saldo, one of the key collaborators in the temporarily occupied Kherson region, ProAgro Group reports.

According to investigators, after the region was seized he voluntarily agreed to head the occupation administration and effectively became its leader. One of his first tasks was to establish full control over the agricultural sector. In 2022, under his leadership, the occupation authorities launched a systematic scheme of forced seizure of agricultural products. Farmers were deprived of grain and other resources, while enterprises whose owners left or refused to cooperate were taken over along with their property and infrastructure, including grain terminals.

The investigation estimates that products worth more than 5.3 billion UAH were illegally appropriated in this way. Saldo then organized their further transportation. The stolen grain was shipped by road and rail to ports in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, as well as to russia, including Krasnodar Krai and Rostov region. From there, the products were exported by sea abroad under the guise of russian origin. The main destinations were Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon. This created a full-scale system of appropriation and export of Ukrainian resources.

So far, nine participants in this scheme who carried out and implemented the occupation authorities’ decisions have already faced trial. They are charged with violating international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons of August 12, 1949, and the laws and customs of war regarding the unlawful appropriation of food resources. The indictment against Saldo is a key step in bringing the organizers of this scheme to justice, including in the International Criminal Court.

The pre-trial investigation was conducted by investigators of the Main Investigation Department of the Security Service of Ukraine with operational support from specialized counterintelligence units.

As reported earlier, in December 2025 the Security Service of Ukraine detained and arrested a foreign vessel in the port of Odesa. The ship was part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” and was used for the illegal transportation of Ukrainian agricultural products from temporarily occupied Crimea.