As the war rages on in Ukraine and Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky is home following a whirlwind September visit to the U.S. where he stopped by the United Nations, met with President Biden, both presidential candidates and toured an ammunition plant in Scranton, Pa.
“Ukraine needs to strengthen its positions on the front line so that we can increase pressure on Russia for the sake of fair, real diplomacy,” expressed Zelensky via a post on X.com in October.
Ukraine needs to strengthen its positions on the frontline so that we can increase pressure on Russia for the sake of fair, real diplomacy. This is why we need a sufficient quantity and quality of long-range weapons, the provision of which, in my opinion, is being delayed by our… pic.twitter.com/73LV1yQLXE
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 3, 2024
Munitions remain critical for his country as the fighting continues and Ukrainian soldiers take the war into Russia.
“Ukraine has done this incursion into Russia and Kursk, which demonstrates that they haven’t lost their will and that they are very capable of fighting for themselves,” said Howard G. Buffett during a Whistlestops for Ukraine tour event in Denver, Colo. “It’s a tough time over there right now, and Russia is just hammering civilian targets back in Ukraine.”
It’s part of the message Buffett shared with a number of audiences during the event, including the Governor of Colorado, as part of the tour he’s doing in partnership with the German Marshall Fund of the U.S.
“Russia is forcing farmers in the occupied areas of Ukraine to turn over their land or sign their land over to Russian businesses and Russian farm organizations,” explains Buffett.
Recent reports show Russia continues to fund its war at the cost of Ukrainian farmers. Some estimates indicate Moscow and its allies have sold nearly $1 billion worth of stolen Ukrainian crops on top of seizing farmland and coercing local farmers.
“Russia continues to farm it, or they’re forcing Ukrainian farmers in the occupied areas to farm it,” said Buffett. “That’s how they’re funding a big part of this war.”
He has made more than a dozen trips to the war zone where his foundation, at the end of this year, will have spent some $800 million. The money is being spent on a host of projects including replacing agricultural equipment, helping with planting, harvesting, feeding people and more recently, working on ways to demine the roughly 25% of the country suspected of being covered in explosives.
“All of that ground that the Russians were on is probably really heavily mined,” recalled Niwot, Colo. farmer John Ellis. “People there are still trying to harvest the crop they planted the year before.”
Ellis listened to Buffett’s comments during a tour stop at the DeLaney Community Farm in Aurora, Colo. Buffett shared the challenges of the demining effort and explained the use of construction and ag-related equipment in clearing thousands of acres.
“We have to understand what survives an explosion,” Buffett explained. “Also, what does it cost to fix something after it’s been damaged?”
Buffett says his foundation has been testing, building and setting off similarly sized explosives in order to find what works safely.
“How does Ukraine, which is currently talking about the process taking 100 years to demine, cut that down to 10 years,” asked Buffett rhetorically. “How do you do that? Well, we have to increase the scale, and we’re doing that with technology and innovation.”
Some of that innovation comes from Colorado-based PTX Trimble and others through autonomy and GPS guidance systems. During the Whistlestop tour, company leaders demonstrated some of PTX Trimble’s latest equipment and answered a flurry of questions from Buffett.
“What was interesting is the depth we went into on the agricultural space,” said Andrew Sunderman, the general manager of PTx Trimble. “He asked about keeping machines operating within boundaries, making sure that we can have the ability to monitor and control them in remote ways, and also shared a fascination for how autonomy can help serve some of the initiatives that he is working on within his foundation.”
“This is about getting a system built,” Buffett echoed. “We know we can use the guidance systems, the mapping systems and autonomy but it’s about putting everything together.”
Buffett said the current pace of demining is comparable to covering the entire state of Colorado on a riding lawn mower. To get the job done, he knows how they calculate the cost is going to have to change.
“I’m going to test things and blow equipment up,” said Buffett. “If I can get thousands of hectares done quickly and amortize a $350,000 machine over 5,000 hectares, then it’s less money than what they put into that field for seed and fertilizer in one year.”
Buffett is confident in these new tools being deployed, but like so many farmers in Ukraine he’s now waiting for the fighting to end.
“They are going to solve this mine problem, but they don’t get to solve it until they win the war,” said Buffett.
