They are slaughtering the cattle again. Not merely the ruin of the small farmer — the outright destruction of Russia's independent agriculture has been proceeding in recent years with astonishing speed. Probably no drought, however severe, ever ruined as many peasant households as the present policy of "sanitary" livestock confiscation.
Against the farmer have combined all the most powerful forces of the modern age: the agro-holdings, which have seized processing, logistics and retail networks; the war state, conducting its costly operation in Ukraine and piling every unbearable burden onto the working masses; and, finally, the bureaucratic machine, which has learned perfectly not how to fight the disaster, but how to fight those who want the truth about it.
Since the beginning of 2026, in the Novosibirsk, Omsk, Sverdlovsk regions and the Volga area, farmers have been having their cattle seized and immediately destroyed. The official grounds: pasteurellosis, rabies, "possibly foot-and-mouth." The count is already in the thousands of head. Compensation: 173 roubles per kilogram — at a market price three to four times higher. Police have set up checkpoints at village entrances. The Investigative Committee opens an inquiry — and closes it in silence.
Forbes.ru · March 2026 · Words from the Scene
"Slaughter carried out without legal grounds can be challenged... If the slaughter was conducted on the pretext of pasteurellosis, the governor's decree can be contested, since no such measure exists in law." — Lawyer Andrei Kuzmin
"Pasteurella is a bacterium that is treated with antibiotics. The disease does not require mass slaughter." — Alexandra Pyanova, National Veterinary Chamber
Before we continue, a word of justice regarding the seizure of grain and livestock in 1932. Walter Duranty — the New York Times correspondent in Moscow, an eyewitness to those events — left in his 1944 book a testimony that must be known.
Walter Duranty · USSR: The Story of Soviet Russia · 1944
"Orders were given in March... that two million tons of grain must be collected within thirty days because the Army had to have it. On pain of death."
"That was the dreadful truth of the so-called 'man-made famine'... Japan was poised to strike and the Red Army must have reserves of food and gasoline. Stalin had won his game against terrific odds, but Russia had paid in lives as heavily as for war."
Stalin dekulakised the landlord and the rural capitalist. Today the rural capitalist — backed by the state veterinary apparatus — is dekulakising the middle peasant. History has been turned on its head.
There is a simple rule of political economy: when the state acts against obvious common sense — find who stands to gain.
— Eastern Post · March 2026