Business in Ukraine

They say the Dutch come in two varieties: preachers and businessmen. Of course, the latter is more known abroad. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Dutch businessmen have come to the East of Europe trying to make a fortune. Sometimes, the businessman and the preacher are united in one person, as is the case with Derk Sauer. Originally working in the Netherlands as an editor for a low-brow high-circulation left-leaning weekly, in 1989 he came to Moscow to found The Moscow Times, becoming a media tycoon in Russia.
 
During the 1990s, the Dutch supermarket giant Ahold, owner of the ubiquitous Albert Heijn stores in the Netherlands, made a profit by selling spoiled foodstuffs in Moscow at a time when other vultures from the “West” were busy looting the country. Shrewd enough to operate through an intermediary (TONAR), it was Albert Heijn’s first, and last, adventure in Russia. As a matter of fact, social misery always offers unique business opportunities, especially for those with no conscience.
 
Today, however, Russia no longer offers the kind of environment so beneficial to foreign adventurers of all kinds, colors and shapes.
 
More recently, it is the Ukraine, another orphan from the Soviet Union, that has been offering opportunities for the adventurous kind of businessman. Father and son Biden have been having their share of the profits that can be made there. Although there are no indications as yet that any Dutchmen were involved in things like fracking or biolabs, they have been deeply involved in the chicken business. The Dutch have set been setting up chicken farms that are among the biggest in the world. This was done because in the EU, stringent food and environmental legislation was making it increasingly expensive to operate giant facilities for the production of the kind of cheap chicken meat favored by fast food chains, lazy home cooks and the urban poor.
 
Have you ever set foot in a big, modern chicken farm? If not, good for you, because it is worse than hell, especially for the poor chickens. Those millions of poor birds, unable to even walk because the hormones they have been fed on made them grow just too fast. The very food they are given has also been tampered with since it is mostly cheap GMO corn or wheat. Forced to sit all day and stumble around a bit, tightly packed together in giant covered spaces where the air is unbreathable (for humans and probably for chickens as well) because of the intolerable stench, the birds are highly susceptible to nasty contagious diseases that would make them unfit for human consumption. Therefore, high doses of antibiotics are administered to them every day. It is obvious the meat from animals living under such conditions is not very good for your health. But the food industry spends a lot of money on publicity with the intent of obliterating any such negative thoughts or doubts the public might entertain.
 
Without the public in the “West” actually realizing it, the Ukraine has become a major exporter of chicken meat to the EU. And as big agribusiness firms and wheat giants such as Cargill and Bunge have been investing heavily in Ukrainian agriculture, especially since the 2014 Maidan coup, increasing quantities of Ukrainian-produced GMO corn, wheat, soy and sunflower seeds have been exported. Mostly to the EU. By the way, the production of GMO grains is still illegal in the Ukraine, but since there is no government body overseeing agriculture and checking big corporations, anything goes.
 
The involvement of the Dutch with Ukrainian agriculture dates from the 1940s. After the Germans attacked the Soviet Union and occupied large swaths of Soviet territory, including the Ukraine, they immediately went about harnessing local resources to produce food for Germany. In the 1920s, Hitler himself had identified the Ukraine as a land for German colonization and expansion. He wanted German farmers to settle there and transform the land into the New Germany’s food basket. Thus in 1941 the LGBU was founded, the Landbewirtschaftungsgesellschaft Ukraine, which was quite happy to secure the cooperation of the NOC (Nederlandsche Oost-Compagnie). This “Netherlands East Company” was founded in 1942 with the purpose of setting up Dutch-owned and operated agricultural and other business in the territories wrested from the Soviet Union. In other words, the NOC, founded and bankrolled by the Dutch national bank and headed by national banker Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, was engaged in the same business as today’s big agribusiness firms. In 1943 the NOC moved into the Ukraine and introduced thousands of Dutch agricultural experts, managers and assorted other specialists to the region. Near Kiev, the Dutch were managing four confiscated Sovchoz (soviet state farms) with a total of ten thousand hectares. Dutch experts were organizing and overseeing cheese manufacturing in Melitopol and running numerous dredging operations all over the Ukraine. The NOC’s agricultural division was led by Professor Marius Dirk Dijt, an internationally renowned authority on agriculture. Moreover, Professor Dijt had also been working as private secretary to Sir Henry Deterding, “the most powerful man in the world,” according to his American biographer. Under Deterding’s leadership the Royal Dutch Shell company had become one of the world’s most powerful and influential businesses. Married to a Russian exile, Deterding had a visceral hatred of the Soviet Union and Communism, and was among Hitler’s earliest financial supporters.
 
Despite their prominent and powerful backers, the Dutch did not last long in the Ukraine during their first venture there. By the end of 1943, after the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad and hammered in the Battle of Kursk, they needed to pull back in order to save their skins as much as they could. The Dutch moved out along with them. Although thousands of Dutchmen were then in the East, fighting communism (25,000 Dutchmen joined the SS), they were just too few to make a difference.
 
Recently it became known that Dutch volunteers had joined the Ukrainian “Foreign Legion,” in order to keep the Ukraine safe for democracy. And safe for giant chicken farms, GMO-farming and all sorts of shady deals benefiting Joe and Hunter Biden and their eager cronies.
 
The second denazification campaign in the Ukraine, however, seems to leave the valiant foreign defenders of “freedom and democracy” no choice but to pack their stuff and run. While they still can.
 
The Dutch among them should realize the Dutch come in only two varieties, and “warrior” is not one of them.