Ukrainian villagers living in the shadow of Europe’s biggest chicken farm are fighting back – not just against the company but the development banks funding it

The locals call this area the Ryaba-land. That’s the name of the chicken brand Nasha Ryaba under which MHP – the largest poultry company in Ukraine and the owners of Vinnytsia farm - sells poultry meat in supermarkets. There are more chicken sheds than houses here. Even the village signs bear the MHP brand.

There are, as is so often the case, tensions between the industrial farms and the villagers. But in this case, anger is focussed not just on the company, but on their funders – the big international development banks that hand out public money.

Earlier this month residents of three of the villages – Zaozerne, Kleban and Olyanytsya – filed a complaint to two of the world’s largest development banks, protesting against the development of the giant poultry farms which they say have profoundly affected their health, their water, and their homes.

The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have, between them, lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Ukraine’s largest poultry producer Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP). In 2015 it had received at least $200m (£150m) since 2010. MHP is mainly owned and run by Yuriy Kosiuk, who is a former deputy presidential chief of staff.

Their flagship farm, Vinnytsia Poultry Farm (described on their website as the largest poultry producer in Europe), now houses over 17 million chickens. It plans to double its production by 2021.

But according to the villagers who have filed the complaint, the farm is a source of misery, leading to heavy traffic that is damaging houses, and unpleasant smells. The villagers say water levels in their wells have fallen, and that they worry about the quality of the river water. They say they are concerned about the pesticides being sprayed on fields of grain for the chickens, and claim that there have been threats of violence against anyone who complains about the company. And meanwhile, they add, a forest that the company promised to plant around the site has never materialised.

And now the poultry farm has almost completed the construction of another poultry unit – a set of 38 chicken houses, which hosts almost 1.5 million chickens – near Zaozerne village.

Some of the villagers have organised petitions against the new construction, organised pickets, sued the company in court and even traveled to Kyiv and met with President Petro Poroshenko’s chief of staff Ihor Rainin in 2017. Nothing has helped. “We want to live a normal life, not to be poisoned like cockroaches here,” says Oksana Bazyliuk from Zaozerne village.

“A big problem here is that the information that’s being disclosed by the company about its local operations and the impacts they will have and the impacts they are already having has been really lacking,” says Caitlin Daniel, attorney of the Global Communities programme at Accountability Counsel, an international non-profit organisation that is helping farmers with filing the complaint. “And it has lead to a lot of fear among the local people and a lot of questions that haven’t been answered.”

But there is also enormous concern about the fact that public money is funding these kind of industrial farming ventures. “I’m concerned about the fact that international financial institutions, acting under development mandates, are supporting this type of business in Ukraine,” said Xavier Sol, director of Counter Balance, a coalition of European NGOs monitoring international investment banks.

“There are various problems linked to the project, from the company’s refusal to engage in an open dialogue with the local population (and its lack of transparency and accountability) to environmental and social impacts of the project.”

MHP told the Guardian that they make sure that any particularly heavy trucks do not go through the village, and also says that it is currently building new roads. “We have no relation to the disappearance of water in the wells, because we do not use water at all from the wells for the production needs of the poultry factory. Water is taken exclusively from the South Buh River. In addition, the plant operates cleaning facilities, so water is returned from the river in better quality than it was when we extracted it. Our attitude towards the environment and the health of residents is unequivocally serious and responsible.”

In relation to the promised forest they said: “Unfortunately, we can not plant the forest on agricultural lands, this is prohibited by the legislation of Ukraine. Representatives of the company that communicate with communities in the Vinnytsia region have repeatedly provided explanations on this issue.” They added that “the company is in constant dialogue with the communities through public hearings, anonymous forms of appeals, and so on”.

The Guardian contacted the International Finance Corporation but they were unable to comment. Anton Usov at EBRD said the bank has had two investment projects with MHP since 2015, which have “no relation to the current complaint”. But he added that since EBRA started work with MHP, the company has improved its dialogue with the local communities with the assistance of the EBRD specialists.

“We were not just giving money for some operations, we made the company totally revise its social and environmental procedures,” Usov said.

Back in the village, though, many of the worried residents say they are afraid to give their names to the Guardian.

“The foreign institution is our last hope,” one local activist said.