This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of 'investor' countries, nor in the category of 'target' countries. Russia has large 'land reserves', since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or even unpopulated. With rapid economic growth, capital of Russian oligarchs in search of new frontiers, and the 2002 land code allowing land sales, land began to attract investment. Land grabbing expands at a rapid pace and in some cases, it results in dispossession and little or no compensation. This paper describes different land acquisitions strategies and argues that the share-based land rights distribution during the 1990s did not provide security of land tenure to rural dwellers. Emerging rural social movements try to form countervailing powers but with limited success. Rich land owners easily escape the implementation of new laws on controlling underutilized land, while there is a danger that they enable eviction with legal measures of rural dwellers. In this sense Russia appears to be a 'normal' case in the land grab debate.

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Right-wing populism has gained ground in Europe in recent years, with the greatest support among rural communities. Yet the European countryside remains largely overlooked in debates on the current political crisis and the ways out of it. This article aims to provide keys for understanding the connection between right-wing populism and the rural world in Europe. Our analysis unfolds around three main ideas. First, we argue that the root cause of the spread of right-wing populism is the fundamental, multidimensional crisis of globalised neoliberal capitalism, particularly pronounced in Europe's countryside. Second, we examine what role historical legacies, trajectories of agrarian change, and other national, regional and local specificities play in shaping populist movements in different rural areas in Europe. Finally, we discuss the constraints and possibilities for the emergence of agrarian (populist) movements that may offer progressive alternatives to right-wing populism in the countryside.

Expectations of Russia becoming a global 'breadbasket' have been nurtured by its rise to the top group of global wheat exporters, the abundance of abandoned land, assumed yield gaps and the apparent 'success' of agroholdings. It is argued here that becoming a global breadbasket is hindered by substantial costs of re-cultivating abandoned land, management and financial problems of megafarms and agroholdings, lack of infrastructure for exports and increased domestic demand for feed grains as input for the meat sector. Furthermore, as Russian wheat production is extremely volatile it might increase global price volatility, rather than contributing to global food security.

This article discusses the relations between patriotism and food sovereignty in postEuromaidan Ukraine. It investigates how the rising Ukrainian national identity and patriotic sentiments during the geopolitical conflict with Russia led to a change in the social imaginary of traditional small-scale farming. Formerly, household farming was seen as a coping strategy of the post-Soviet population and a relic of the socialist past, doomed to disappear in the nearest future. Nowadays, more and more Ukrainians view small-scale farming as a sustainable alternative to large-scale industrial agriculture, which could feed Ukraine (and Europe) with ecological and healthy food. This study uses primary qualitative and quantitative data collected during field research before and after the Euromaidan revolution to reveal how pro-European aspirations and rising patriotism contribute to the emerging discourses on the 'rights to food and to farm' in Ukraine. This transformation could bring a new trajectory to the country's agricultural development and might lead to the emergence of a food sovereignty movement.