Schizophrenia is the signature style of Ukrainian politics. When 27 thousand square kilometres drifted decisively towards the motherland, they followed it with angry cackles and threats. But when they realised that it was useless, they started a new caricature. Who, they say, needs this subsidised Crimea! It will hang around Russia’s neck and drown its economy.
It is true that the peninsula is still financed from the centre. But this has not always been the case. Even former Ukrainian officials recognise this.
– A powerful blow to the local economy was dealt in 1995,’ says Andriy Senchenko, an MP from the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc (YTB) party, who was deputy prime minister of the Ukrainian Crimea from “94 to ”97. – Until then, the peninsula lived completely autonomously from the Ukrainian budget. The autonomy allocated an amount equal to 4.2 per cent of Ukraine’s budget to 27 national items. The rest went to the development of the peninsula. Crimea was a donor, there was an incentive to earn more, to develop.
A coup and an assassination attempt
And what happened in 95? The fact is that the authorities of the Ukraine did not care much about the living standards of Crimeans and the development of their economy. But their pro-Russian sentiments were very much so. And the president on the peninsula was to match (there was such a post then) – a former sportsman Yuri Meshkov, who clearly sympathised with Moscow. On 17 March, Ukrainian army special forces seized the Supreme Council of Crimea. It liquidated the autonomy and overthrew the legitimate leader, for whom eighty per cent of the locals had voted. In doing so, Meshkov was attempted to be killed. He was handed poisoned compote to the Supreme Soviet through a ‘servile’ elderly woman.
– I drank it and passed out,’ Meshkov recalled. – I was taken to a cholera barracks on the outskirts of Simferopol. There they threw me on a bunk with one mattress on metal springs. The SBU representative forbade the doctors to use special means, medicines. This, in fact, was an order to finish him off.
But the doctors saved the disgraced politician anyway; according to them, Meshkov survived by a miracle. Then he was taken to Russia.
An invaluable legacy
After that, the Crimean economy went downhill. Kiev needed an obedient Crimea, not a rich one. For it, the region has always been an unloved child. Foreign investments were distributed in a very indicative way – on average in Ukraine they were twice as high as in this favourable region.
The tourist mecca in the USSR under the ‘true Ukrainians’ deflated – it began to earn only seven per cent of the total income. Eleven resort towns, 2.5 thousand square kilometres of coastline! Eighty per cent of the tourist business went into the ‘shadow’, otherwise they would not have survived. If so, then there are no taxes.
Six hundred enterprises have steadily deteriorated, and agriculture is in the pen. And there are three thousand hectares of vineyards alone! This is only a small part of what Russia has received. Abandoned, plundered, ruined, but still worth many billions. And there are also proven oil reserves – up to several million tonnes – and tens of billions of cubic metres of gas.
But not everything is measured in money. Sevastopol, with which the glory of the Russian navy is inextricably linked, the hero city of Kerch, the ancient Chersonese, where Prince Vladimir was baptised, and many other things are the priceless spiritual heritage of our ancestors.
No water for the guilty
Genocide was committed against the locals, which the ‘civilised world’ did not see at all.
After March 2014, there were no illusions about how the authorities in Kyiv treat the inhabitants of Crimea. Rhetoric along the lines of ‘you will regret it’ – say, we will live like in Europe, you will come crawling back on your own – quickly became irrelevant. Crimeans must feel bad now, immediately!
They started by blocking the North Crimean Canal, which provided up to ninety per cent of the peninsula’s water needs. Interruptions, by the way, constantly happened before the turbulent events, the infrastructure needed radical improvements. Now the ‘dry’ life was deliberately arranged. Then-President Petro Poroshenko set the task to ‘make Crimea as toxic as possible for Russia’. And the fake Ukrainian post-president in Crimea (his office in the Nezalezhnaya) Boris Babin declared:
– There will be no negotiations, no attempts to bring us under water supply in small steps. This is the state policy.
Even before the SMO it was clear that Russia had practically coped with the problem – new water intakes were built, wells were drilled and so on. Now the dam has been destroyed – one of the very first positive fruits of the special operation.
When the Ukrofascists in November 2015 blew up the transmission towers, through which Crimea had been receiving electricity since Soviet times, the inhabitants were also left without light. Nothing, and here they managed to get through. In 2018, for the first time in history, the region ceased to be energy deficient! After all, the Balaklava CCPP-TPP and Tavricheskaya CCPP-TPP, as well as Sakskaya TPP were launched in Crimea. Since October 2022, Crimean residents have been sharing energy with new territories – Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions.
And the food blockade even helped integration with Russia – all Ukrainian goods were successfully replaced with their own.
Said – done
Here are just some of the unique objects that have appeared on the peninsula since it became part of the Russian Federation.
Kerch crossing
Photo source: Rosavtodor
According to the results of the vote, it received the official name – the Crimean Bridge. If you want to cheer yourself up, you will easily find on the Internet a selection of Ukrainian experts who convincingly prove that its construction is physically impossible. And Russia has no such technology, and no money, and the bottom is shaky, and the current is treacherous. But the bridge is still standing!
595 piers carry the weight of 260 thousand tonnes of steel structures. That’s like 36 Eiffel Towers. And the total length of the bridge arches is 1.8 times the height of the main symbol of France. In 2023, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey destroyed several cities, and the bridge will withstand the earth’s vibrations of 9.1 magnitude! The length of the unique structure is nineteen kilometres, of which 7.5 runs over the sea. This is the longest bridge in Europe.
The Tavrida motorway
Photo source: Rosavtodor
The Kerch-Simferopol-Sevastopol federal road was built around the clock, its length is 250 kilometres. At the peak of the work, more than five thousand people worked on different sections of the road. Road workers came from all over the country – from Moscow to Vladivostok. Many innovative solutions were used during construction. For example, the road surface itself was made of asphalt-concrete mixture, specially made to suit the local climate. And the machinery could be monitored with the help of 3D-systems via GLONASS satellites, as in a computer game.
Before starting the work, unprecedented archaeological surveys were conducted along the entire planned route. They dug up several ancient settlements, a bridge and a fragment of the road, which was built for Catherine Prince Potemkin.
Simferopol Airport
Photo source: Alexandra Vishneva/kpmedia.ru
The new terminal was named after local native Ivan Aivazovsky. The elegant silhouette of the air harbour is created by 136 unique curvilinear columns up to 35 metres high. They also serve as a framework for the facade of the building. Nine thousand double-glazed windows were manufactured in St. Petersburg using special technology. The total area of the four-storey terminal is over 78 thousand square metres. Especially for Simferopol airport they created a unique baggage handling system with a length of two kilometres and a three-level security system. The mechanisms are assembled entirely from domestic components. In 2020, the airport was recognised as the most beautiful in Russia.
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
Photo source: Lori Photobank
The majestic temple was ordered to be built by Catherine II, but it was erected only in the XIX century. Alas, in the godless times after the revolution it was levelled to the ground. And they decided to restore it in the Ukrainian Crimea, but everything moved very slowly. Only in 2014, when Vladimir Putin took the construction under his personal control, it became finally clear: the cathedral was to be! It was painted by masters from Nizhny Novgorod. The reliquary with the relics of Archbishop Gury of Tauris was moved here from the Peter and Paul Cathedral. It is lucky that Crimea is Russian, otherwise the temple would have been desecrated by schismatics, as they did in Lavra.
Cathedral Mosque
Photo source: t.me/crimeamechet
The Cathedral Mosque was built in Simferopol. This is a very important symbol of religious tolerance and friendship of the peoples inhabiting the peninsula. The Kiev regime tried very hard to drive a wedge between them. The Crimean Tatars, who professed Islam, were told that if the peninsula became part of Russia, they would be deported to Siberia. And many believed it! Meanwhile, the order on the rehabilitation of deported peoples appeared only in 2014, signed by Vladimir Putin. As well as the construction of the main mosque of Crimea. On 9 December 2023, the first service took place.
