A farmer in southern Ukraine's Mykolaiv region says his tomatoes are being left to rot after a Russian drone damaged the Sandora complex that used to buy his crop, Blik reported on September 27.

"Sandora no longer has the plant that used to take them. You can't lift the bush, there are so many tomatoes! Everything is slowly going to waste, it's already autumn and cold. There is nowhere to sell them or hand them in," farmer Viktor Sviderskyi said in a video posted on Instagram, filmed beside rows of plants that no one is tending.

The rotting tomatoes are a small, visible piece of Russia's total war on Ukraine's economy, which has moved from the front line to the country's two biggest export earners. Farm goods made up 59% of Ukraine's exports in 2025, bringing in $22.5bn, and 64% in the first five months of 2026. Metals, the other pillar, earned $15.98bn or about 24% of merchandise exports in 2021, and for most of Ukraine's independent history steel was its single biggest export. The mills have now stopped after strikes idled about 90% of output. "As of today, Ukraine no longer has a steel industry," said Oleksandr Vodoviz, who heads Metinvest's chief executive office.

A Shahed drone hit a Sandora warehouse near Mykolaiv on the evening of August 29, setting it ablaze, local news site Korabelov.info reported. PepsiCo, which owns the Sandora and Sadochok juice brands and makes Pepsi and Lipton Ice Tea in the region, confirmed its production complex had been damaged and said no employees were hurt, the Kyiv Independent reported on August 30.

Alternative outlets are limited. Russian strikes on the Greater Odesa ports since July 23 have all but halted maritime traffic, costing Ukraine more than $2bn in lost exports by the central bank's reckoning, as the drone war between the two countries shifts to crippling ports. About 90% of Ukraine's farm exports used to go by sea, and rail, road and Danube routes cover only about 44% of the volumes the harvest could support, Agrarian Policy Minister Taras Vysotskyi said in September.

Grain can at least be stored while farmers wait, although the country faces an 11mn-tonne storage shortfall this autumn. Fresh tomatoes cannot wait. Kernel chief executive Yevhen Osypov has warned that Ukraine could lose up to 12mn tonnes of its 2027 harvest as farmers stop planting crops they cannot sell abroad.

The squeeze on Ukraine's farm sector is part of a food price shock that began when Russia and Ukraine shut each other's grain ports, and of Operation Wildberries, in which both sides now hit the other's civilian economy. Russian strikes on warehouses have cost Ukrainian big business nearly $550mn.

"Support the Ukrainian farmer, I don't know what next year will be like," Sviderskyi said.