Not far from thousands of snails mating in a dark and damp room, this former engineer recalls the time when he started his business with his wife, in 2016, after tasting his first gastropods during a vacation in Greece .

"Before the Covid, our farm produced 36 tons per season," he says proudly.

His farm, located in a village near Lviv, a large city in western Ukraine, exported mainly to Italy, but also to France and Spain.

But with the appearance of the virus, "demand has plunged and prices too, reducing our European projects to zero", he regrets.

He and his wife were preparing for a better season this year.

This was without counting on the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, launched on February 24, which put the economy on the ground.

According to the World Bank, Ukraine's GDP is expected to fall by 45% in 2022. And while the war has killed thousands and pushed millions of Ukrainians onto the roads, it has also destroyed the country's infrastructure and driven many men of working age at the front.

- Snail caviar -

In March, agricultural exports from Ukraine were divided by four compared to February, according to the Ministry of Economy of this country often nicknamed the "breadbasket of Europe".

In western Ukraine, spared by the fighting, the authorities have called on businesses to reopen to support the war effort.

Still, Ivan Iouskevitch plans to produce only half of the snails he hoped for this year, and much less than when everything was going well.

After the departure of his wife and son abroad, he even thought of stopping production completely.

But when he heard that the employees of a farm in the east of the country had fled their region and were looking for work, he invited them to join him.

Snails at Ivan Yuskevitch's farm in Solonka, Ukraine, April 20, 2022 Yuriy Dyachyshyn AFP

In the room where her snails mate, it is now up to Iryna Iablinska to delicately extract some of the white eggs from the coconut peat, salt them and turn them into caviar.

The other eggs will be installed in polystyrene boxes to become larvae, which will then leave for the garden while waiting to become adult snails.

Iryna, her husband and their two children aged six and two are from Kramatorsk, close to the front line in the east.

They fled on February 24, when they heard the first rockets.

Chickens and fighter planes

Today, the farm is idling.

But for Iryna, western Ukraine is stable enough for her eldest to attend school online.

"We feel safe here," she says.

Ivan Yuskevich in his snail farm in Solonka, Ukraine, April 20, 2022 Yuriy Dyachyshyn AFP

In the garden, Ivan Yuskevich also shows a brood of black Silkie chickens, once popular with visiting children.

The chickens also eat snails on occasion, as did the customers of the now empty restaurant, explains the farmer.

When he returned from Greece with his wife, Ivan Yuskevich was surprised to discover that Ukrainians were collecting snails to send them to Lithuania, where they were processed and sold in Europe as Lithuanian products.

Hence his idea of ​​producing directly in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Ukrainian snails not being the most suitable for gastronomy, he had to bring his own from North Africa.

While Ivan Yuskevich stands between his snails and his chickens, a combat plane crosses the still wintry sky.

The breeder says he often sees them flying over the peaceful village since the start of the war.

“Thank God they are Ukrainians!” he says.

© 2022 AFP