Farmers state attempt to suppress protest movement in Kuban by means of peasant-farmer association

The Association of Peasant Farms and Agricultural Cooperatives (known as the ACCOR) is collecting signatures of farmers of the Krasnodar Territory (also known as Kuban by the name of the major river) to the appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the actions of the organizers of the "tractor march" are treated as an attempt to defend their mercantile interests. However, the appeal highlights the same problems, which were raised by protesters. The head of the "tractor march" treats the appeal as "an attempt to suppress the farmers' protest."

The authors of the appeal claim that "they are against the 'Maydans' and 'tractor marches', while the 'Polite Farmers' and protest leaders are not their representatives. They also accuse tractor marchers of land frauds, and offer to seek for other ways to solve problems.

The appeal has also noted that the main problem of small Kuban farmers is that "some large holdings prevent small farmers' access to leasing shareholders' land plots." The authors assert that large agrarian complexes pay little, if any at all, to shareholders, but fail to present any specific examples.

Other problems, cited by the ACCOR, are the lease of state-owned land plots from the redistribution fund, and protracted bankruptcy of agricultural enterprises.

According to Alexei Volchenko, the all-Russian "tractor march" has been postponed till next year.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.