Drought won’t prevent us from gathering rich harvest, Tkachev says

"Despite a drought unleashed on 11 regions of Russia, because of which 1.5 billion hectares of farmland has been removed from turnover, this year the country will collect a rich harvest,’’ the head of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Alexander Tkachev, told the Russia-24 TV channel.

"11 subjects of the Russian Federation have been affected by the drought, 1.5 million hectares of land have been removed from turnover. This, of course, is a serious loss, but, in fairness, I must say that this is not the hardest drought that we have seen, we have experienced much more severе droughts.’’