“What should we hold on to?”: How Crimea lives through 5 years after the referendum

Five years have passed since the events of 2014. Crimeans give birth in Krasnodar so that the child can travel to Europe in the future, deliberately write the address with errors when ordering on AliExpress, complain about low salaries and high prices, and have already come to terms with the fact that being unrecognized will last for a long time.

Фото: Depositphotos

On the outskirts of Feodosia there is a house that resembles a traditional Ukrainian mud hut - a hut with clay-covered walls. A rooster is running around the yard, the washbasin is made from a lampshade, and there are earthquake cracks on the walls, he says Bi-bi-si. 63-year-old pensioner Anna Buyanova lives here. It was she who in May 2016 complained to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about the low pensions of Crimean residents, to which she heard: “There is no money, but you hold on.”

The meeting of the people and the prime minister was unplanned. Local residents learned from familiar officials: Medvedev will go to the Aivazovsky Art Gallery.

“Some came from the night before to take a seat just to see the Prime Minister,” says Buyanova, yelping heavily.

When the prime minister arrived, the Theodosians surrounded him. Real Medvedev was different from the one everyone used to see on TV.

“I told him: ‘Dear son, you are so small and thin, how can you rule the country?’” Buyanova recalls.

Judging by the videos made by eyewitnesses, Buyanova responded to the famous phrase “There is no money, but you hold on”: “We understand.”

Three years later, she continues the controversy with Medvedev in absentia.

“Ah, my dear son, what is there to hold on to?! A straw - and it will drown! What to hold on to? What about the air?!” she tells BBC correspondents.

When asked to compare her life before the annexation of Crimea and now, five years later, the pensioner replies that Crimea is now “protected,” but after the “transition to the Russian Federation,” the citizens “are being ripped off the last bit, they have to pay everywhere.”

According to her, her current pension lasts her “a week or two.” “There is great injustice in our localities,” sighs the pensioner.

After listening to Buyanova, correspondents Bi-bi-si We drove along the route Feodosia - Yalta - Sevastopol - Simferopol - Evpatoria. And it turned out that the emotional and vivid speech of the famous Feodosia pensioner accurately expresses the mood of the majority of Crimeans on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the annexation.

“The prices are just outrageous”

Grocery store in the village of Orekhovo - on the road from Simferopol to Evpatoria. The cost of a kilogram of bananas is close to one hundred rubles ($1,55), a bottle of local kefir costs almost ninety rubles ($1,40), and a fresh flatbread will cost thirty (about 50 cents). This is the price level of premium Moscow supermarkets.

- So what to do? It’s sad,” the saleswoman remarks philosophically when asked by a reporter. Bi-bi-si about high prices.

- How do you live here?

“It’s easier for some, harder for others.” It’s definitely easier for the one in power,” she replies, clearly dissatisfied with the fact that the visitor doesn’t buy anything, but only asks questions.

Official statistics reflect one of the main problems of Crimea in a very contradictory way. Thus, from Rosstat data it follows that in February the average cost of a dozen eggs in Simferopol was 59 rubles (90 cents), which is less than in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But fermented milk products, for example, cost almost the same as in Moscow. And potatoes are even more expensive than in the Russian capital.

The Crimea is also officially the most expensive gasoline in Russia, and real estate prices have long been inferior only to Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Moscow region (data from Rosstat and TsIAN).

Trust in the objectivity of statistics is undermined by local authorities who conduct their own price monitoring: sometimes their data differs even from Rosstat. According to their data, for example, it turns out that a kilogram of flour in Krasnodar in February cost 6 rubles cheaper than in local retail chains in Simferopol (Pud, Furshet, etc.) Although, according to Rosstat, their cost is almost the same .

Фото: Depositphotos

Crimeans in the matter of prices are guided by their feelings.

“Russian prices are just brutal,” military pensioner Svetlana from Sevastopol assesses the situation.

“Crazy, wild,” says Bi-bi-si resident Evpatoria.

“Under Ukraine, goods also cost at the level of the capital - Kyiv,” she recalled in a conversation with Bi-bi-si resident of Yalta.

“Prices are at the same level, the currency has just changed,” says a young man from Yevpatoria.

Since 2014, accumulated inflation in Crimea has amounted to 46%, as follows from Crimean Statistics data. For comparison, on average in Russia prices over the same period increased by 27%.

Such growth was inevitable, believes Ivan Fedyakov, general director of the INFOLine agency: five years ago there was a different logistics for delivering goods to the peninsula - they came directly from the territory of Ukraine. In addition, Crimean prices grew along with Russian ones due to the devaluation of the ruble, he adds.

In June 2018, during the last direct line with President Vladimir Putin, a Crimean businessman, standing on Mount Mithridates on the outskirts of Kerch, complained to the president about high prices. Putin acknowledged the problem, but predicted that after the opening of freight traffic on the Kerch Bridge, prices would “stabilize.”

The wagons went to the bridge in October 2018 of the year. However, this did not affect the prices, contrary to the forecasts of the president. Over the past three months of 2018, prices in the Crimea increased by one percent, and inflation of the year exceeded the figures of 2018. In January, prices jumped another one percent.

“The bridge had no impact,” admits Arsen, a young resident of the village of Azovskoye in northeastern Crimea, in March 2019. And he complains about low incomes, because of which rising prices are perceived especially sharply by Crimeans.

“We need to piss off”

Salaries and prices are a popular area for comparing the two periods of Crimean history.

On the main embankment of Theodosia to correspondents Bi-bi-si An elderly woman in a white beret approached - poetess Larisa Timofeeva. She invited me to a creative evening called “Crimea. Russia. Destiny” and offered to read a poem on camera dedicated to the events of 2014.

“The fields will bloom again in lush colors,

And happily sigh your people.

You will be reborn, Crimean land,

Under the Russian flag of sun and freedom."

Following the poems, a conversation began about the prose of life. “Life is hard for those who have a small pension,” admits Timofeeva. Her income is 16 thousand ($250), but she pays five ($77) for utilities - the apartment is large.

At the beginning of 2019, the average pension in the Crimea was 12,7 thousand rubles ($ 197).

The same situation applies to salaries. In 2018, the average nominal salary on the peninsula was 29,2 thousand rubles ($454), according to Crimean statistics. Crimean salaries are significantly lower than the all-Russian indicator (43 thousand - $668), as well as those regions with which the peninsula is usually compared in terms of prices. Thus, in the Krasnodar Territory, citizens in 2018 received an average of 33,6 thousand rubles ($522).

Even this small salary by federal standards differs from city to city. For example, in Feodosia the average salary is 16 thousand rubles ($249), says local resident Natalya. According to her, it is impossible to live on this. “Some people make money in the summer by renting out housing to tourists, others go to work. But if you take a family without extra real estate and without a business, then to survive you need to work together,” she says.

Фото: Depositphotos

However, the official data is different: according to Crimean Statistics, in the first nine months of 2018, Feodosia was one of the three cities on the peninsula with the highest salaries - the agency estimated the average salary there at 31,3 thousand rubles ($486).

A young man named Ridvan living in one of the villages of the Dzhankoy district in the north-east of Crimea works at a gas station on a daily basis and receives 9 thousand rubles a month for his work. “It saves the homestead,” he says.

“Now summer doesn’t bring me much income,” says a young girl from the same city.

“In Ukraine, my pension was enough,” recalls an elderly woman in Feodosia.

“Pensions are higher compared to Ukrainian ones,” her fellow countryman believes, on the contrary.

“Salaries are higher now,” says a resident of Yalta

According to RBC estimates, if in 2013 the average Crimean citizen could afford to buy a little more than seven food baskets per month with one salary, then in 2018 - almost ten.

The ability of a Sevastopol to buy an apartment has increased compared to Ukrainian times by 7%, calculated Bi-bi-si based on data from the local ACG agency

“Ukraine could not handle such volumes”

Small salaries contrast with large-scale cash injections from the federal budget. Since 2015, almost half a trillion rubles ($7,77 billion) have been spent under the “Socio-economic Development of Crimea and Sevastopol” program, of which 140 billion ($2,17 billion) - in 2018 alone.

All this financial flow goes to infrastructure: in five years the Kerch Bridge was built, the Tavrida highway is being built and reconstructed, which will pass through the entire peninsula, two new thermal power plants have been built, and a 12-story hospital is being built in the capital of Crimea. A new terminal at Simferopol airport was built on the basis of public-private partnership.

First of all, investments in infrastructure were recalled by local residents when answering the question of what has changed on the peninsula over the past five years.

“In five years, Crimea has seen such financial injections that Ukraine has not seen in the entire period,” says a young resident of Yevpatoria.

“Ukraine would not be able to handle such volumes,” says a pensioner from Simferopol, listing the infrastructure projects of recent years.

True, the popular opinion on the peninsula that the Ukrainian authorities only took money from the peninsula without giving anything in return is not supported by statistics.

Фото: Depositphotos

In 2013, the last full year under Ukrainian rule, half of the Crimean budget was formed through subsidies from the central government, the BBC calculated. Now the federal budget forms two-thirds of the local treasury. Although it is clear that the capabilities of the Russian budget are higher: in 2013, the budget of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was $1,1 billion, in 2018 - $2,8 billion.

However, comparing their lives before annexation and after, most Crimeans said Bi-bi-sithat it either “did not improve” or “remained the same.”

Attitude to infrastructure projects as something that does not have a qualitative impact on everyday life is typical for residents of all regions of Russia, political analyst Andrei Kolyadin notes.

Authorities believe new roads and power plants will provide a boost in the future, but residents want changes now - such as higher incomes, the expert says. The result is growing discontent.

On childbirth in Krasnodar

For five years, almost all hints of the Ukrainian past of the peninsula disappeared from public space. Road signs and address plates in the Ukrainian language are replaced by Russians. However, in some places the past still reminds of itself.

So, in Simferopol correspondent Bi-bi-si found a sign “vul. Sergeev-Tsensky" and the sign "Ukraine. Monument to architecture" on the building of the Ministry of Finance of Crimea. There are still old gas stations at gas stations, on which it is written “vartіst hryvnia”, that is, “cost in hryvnia”. And along the streets of Crimean cities, trolleybuses and minibuses “Bogdan”, produced by the Ukrainian corporation of the same name, Oleg Gladkovsky, the ex-partner of President Petro Poroshenko, are still scurrying around.

“Our life has changed in an excellent way, we are very happy,” a resident of Yevpatoria cheerfully compares Ukrainian and Russian times. But she admits: she kept the Ukrainian passport - in her words, as a “souvenir”, in a “box”.

And it is not the only one: Crimeans not only hold passports with a yellow-blue trident, but also use them instead of Russian ones.

The border between “mainland” Ukraine and Crimea near the village of Kalanchak. The checkpoint on the Ukrainian side is emphatically temporary: hastily assembled booths, concrete blocks with embrasures for shooting standing right on the highway. You have to show your passports while standing on the street in the cold steppe wind: there are no facilities for inspection. All this seems to emphasize the attitude of the Ukrainian authorities to the events of 2014: on the other side of the border there is temporarily occupied territory.

The Russian checkpoint looks more fundamental: closed rooms for passport and customs inspection, equipment for scanning all carried baggage.

Direct passenger interrupted. To get to Ukraine and back, Crimeans first arrive by bus to the border, go on foot through two checkpoints, then get on the bus again and go about their business.

The only convenience is the ability to buy one ticket for two buses at once. It looks like a plastic token, on one side of which, for example, “Armensk” (a northern Crimean city) is written, and on the other side “Kherson” (a city in southern Ukraine).

Despite the difficulties, over 120 thousands of people in both directions pass through the checkpoints in the north of Crimea every month, according to the latest statistics of the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine. At the same time, according to the census 2014 of the year, conducted after the annexation, only 46 thousand Crimean citizens retained their Ukrainian citizenship, with a population of 2,2 million.

Residents of the peninsula use Ukrainian passports to travel “to the mainland”; they go to the Kherson region to reissue documents. Re-registration is often accompanied by additional checks, according to the UN report on human rights in Crimea.

“Because of all these labor costs, it’s more difficult for me to go to my parents in Ukraine,” says Natalya, a resident of Feodosia. “And before, I could take a bus in Simferopol in the evening and be with them in the morning.”

It is problematic to get out of the Crimea not only to Ukraine, but also to Europe. Some countries refuse to issue Schengen visas to residents of the peninsula due to the unrecognized status of the occupied territory.

However, travel companies in Simferopol and Sevastopol help you get the coveted stamp in your passport even with Crimean registration, said Anastasia, a resident of the peninsula. True, the cost of the service reaches 800 euros (900-odd dollars) for one visa. One of the Sevastopol travel agencies reported that for a “guaranteed” visa you will have to pay 600-700 euros ($680-790), plus you will have to go to Krasnodar or Moscow to submit fingerprints.

In the list of countries that allegedly issue visas to Crimeans, employee Nadezhda named the Czech Republic and Italy. They were also mentioned in an article by Radio Liberty devoted to the visa problem in Crimea.

However, even intermediary travel agencies cannot help if a visa is required for a child born in Crimea after annexation. “On his birth certificate it is written: “Crimea, Russia.” The same is in the “Place of Birth” column in the foreign passport. With such a record it is impossible to obtain Schengen. They give it to the whole family, but not to the child,” laments Anastasia from Sevastopol.

Those who know about this problem try to go to Krasnodar to give birth, adds her fellow countrywoman Ekaterina. In addition, Krasnodar is also the closest place from where you can fly to Europe on a direct flight: due to sanctions, the brand new Simferopol airport serves only flights from Russia.

But they go to Krasnodar not only for childbirth or landing on an international flight: there you can see shops that do not work in the Crimea.

“We are like Northern Cyprus”

“Hurray, we’re finally at Magnit,” Yalta resident Vyacheslav Reprintsev says to the camera about one of the largest retail chains in Russia. “Magnet!” his wife rejoices, half-jokingly.

They run the YouTube channel “Crimea through the eyes of locals.” A separate video is dedicated to visiting the FixPrice store in Anapa, another is about a trip to the Perekrestok and Magnit stores. In total, both received 70 thousand views.

For Crimeans, who rarely leave the peninsula, these shops, familiar to all Russians, are truly a real curiosity. Neither X5 Retail Group (owns the Pyaterochka, Perekrestok and Karusel chains), nor Magnit, nor FixPrice, nor other chains began operating in Crimea after the annexation.

However, there are network players who are not afraid to work in Crimea. For example, the Russian Sportmaster has three stores on the peninsula. At the same time, the company opened retail outlets in Ukraine. The situation is similar with the French Auchan, which openly operates both in Simferopol and in “mainland” Ukraine.

Sometimes retailers work on the peninsula not directly, but through related structures. Until recently, L'Etoile sold cosmetics to Crimeans through its wholly owned subsidiary in Crimea. However, at the beginning of 2019, the company was transferred to Alexander Rubin, who previously worked as the financial director and director of corporate governance at L'Etoile.

In some cases, a possible connection with a major federal player is hidden deep.

For example, in Crimea there is not a single federal network of gas stations - neither Rosneft, nor Gazpromneft, nor Lukoil. But at the same time, there are several gas stations called “T~neft”, which use Tatneft’s signature red and green colors in their design.

One of them, not far from Yalta, is managed by the Resurs-A company, registered to a company from Tatarstan, its ultimate owner is Sergey Kucheryavenko. He is a director or owner of another 255 companies.

At the same time on the day when the reporter visited Bi-bi-si, it sold gasoline from Tatneft-AZS-Yug.

Фото: Depositphotos

The Resurs-A company was already mentioned in a Reuters investigation in December 2017. A Sevastopol gas station was registered in her name, which was previously controlled by the KONTs company, associated with a subsidiary of Tatneft.

In Crimea there are not only federal retail and gas stations networks. There are no offices of the Big Four mobile operators here.

Among the popular Russian banks, Rossiya Bank, which has long been subject to sanctions, operates in Crimea. Neither Sberbank, nor VTB, nor Alfa Bank are represented on the peninsula.

“Sanctions,” explains a barista in a coffee shop in Yevpatoria casually, without being distracted from work, when a correspondent Bi-bi-si trying unsuccessfully to pay for coffee using Apple Pay.

Instead, the phone has to get the card itself and attach it to the terminal. The transaction through the American Visa, which does not recognize the annexation, goes well: this time the information on the purchase of double espresso is processed through the national payment card system of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (NSPK), and not through the foreign Apple servers.

Yllta and Sevast0p0l

Due to the fears of federal players, a unique economic ecosystem has developed in Crimea - local retail chains, operators and banks operate here. Some are directly owned by the Russian state - such as the largest bank RNKB with 170 branches on the peninsula. The ownership structure of others goes to anonymous offshores: for example, the mobile operator Volna is registered to a company from the British Virgin Islands.

However, local residents have already become accustomed to this ecosystem as an inevitability. “The experience of Transnistria and Northern Cyprus shows that isolation can last for decades,” says Natalya from Feodosia.

Under these conditions, Crimeans have new everyday habits that they could hardly have imagined when they went to the referendum in March 2014,

A basic technological habit has become the use of a VPN, a service that allows you to hide your Crimean IP address and freely use Internet services. For example, to watch a series via Netflix or a paid movie on YouTube.

“Technological progress does not stand still, I hardly notice the isolation,” says a girl from Simferopol. “It can be more difficult for young people to spend a weekend at home in a cozy environment with a girl and a cat and watch a TV series. We are trying to find workarounds,” complains a young resident of Yevpatoria.

Shopping in the Chinese online store AliExpress has become a whole science - specialized communities on social networks are dedicated to it.

In order to start shopping, Crimeans create a new account for themselves via VPN to hide their real location. Further, when specifying the delivery address, they deliberately make a mistake in the address in order to bypass system restrictions. For example, they write the symbol zero instead of the letter “o” in the word Sevastopol, says Ekaterina from Sevastopol.

The tricks work. “I order a lot on AliExpress,” admits Alexey, a resident of Simferopol.

Errors in the address are also made when ordering bank cards from the “mainland” in order to pay for purchases in international online stores: all seven banks operating in Crimea are under international sanctions.

At least until mid-January 2019, Yandex.Money and Qiwi cards were delivered to the peninsula, the BBC wrote. To do this, only one mistake was made in the order form: the address indicated the Krasnodar Territory instead of the Crimea. The Yandex and Qiwi companies then denied that they were delivering cards to Crimea.

If someone 2014 year brought only domestic difficulties when buying goods in China or watching TV shows, then for many Crimean Ukrainians, it became a tragedy.

“2014 became a litmus test in relations with people and with our country. When nothing is taken from you, you live and love your country. [And when she is taken away], you realize how dear she is to you. People whom I considered friends, [and] relatives who turned out to be enemies disappeared from my life,” says Olga Pavlenko, an activist at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Crimea.

No flags without anthem

“I speak badly in Russian, I only speak Ukrainian,” says a man entering Crimea from the Ukrainian Kalanchak to a Russian border guard.

The border guard reassures him in Russian that he understands Ukrainian. And then he bombards with additional questions: “Where are you coming from? What are you doing in Odessa? What is your occupation?".

Because of this impromptu interrogation, the Ukrainian becomes noticeably nervous and switches to excellent Russian. In the end, they let him through. At the exit from the security checkpoint, a BBC correspondent catches up with him. “I think you can tell by my behavior what my position [on annexation] is,” he replies.

In 2014, after the referendum, 15,7% of Crimean residents identified themselves as “Ukrainians,” according to census data. Compared to the last Ukrainian census conducted in 2001, their number decreased by 8%. Are there organizations protecting their interests?

The public organization “Ukrainian Community of Crimea” officially operates in Crimea. Its head, Anastasia Gridchina, regularly makes comments in state media criticizing the Kyiv authorities. Among the founders of the community, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is the former deputy head of the Crimean branch of the Young Guard of United Russia, Roman Chegrinets. At the same time, he also heads the organization “Belarusians of Crimea”.

Gridchina does not deny that he is cooperating with the authorities, but does not see anything wrong with that. According to her, the community sees as its goal the support of Ukrainian culture in the Crimea, without challenging Russian sovereignty over the peninsula.

“I am not interested in a pro-Russian organization in principle. It makes no sense,” says Crimean resident of Simferopol Vera Levkovich, who openly declares her pro-Ukrainian views on social networks. “This is a pocket organization,” says Olga Pavlenko.

Until recently, Pavlenko was an activist of the Ukrainian Cultural Center, which came under pressure from law enforcement agencies, as follows from the UN report on human rights on the peninsula. “We asked to allow an evening in memory of Lesya Ukrainka, but we were forbidden. We organized Ukrainian embroidery courses, and the prosecutor’s office came to the library where they were taking place,” says Pavlenko.

In September 2018, after searches of her home on suspicion of connections with the Right Sector banned in Russia, Pavlenko left Crimea for Ukraine.

The UN connects the prosecution of pro-Ukrainian residents of the Crimea with their views. For example, in 2018, a resident of one of the villages in the north-west of the peninsula Vladimir Balukha was sentenced to a criminal term for possession of weapons and ammunition. But the report’s authors point out that the search, in the course of which they found the ammunition, began after the Balukh once again hung the Ukrainian flag on its house.

Due to fear of persecution, some Crimean Ukrainians try not to advertise their views and do not participate in any public events. “I am Ukrainian, for me the events of 2014 are a tragedy. But I don’t show myself as Ukrainian,” says Natalya from Feodosia.

The UN also fixes serious pressure on the Crimean Tatars, to whom, during the last census, they attributed more than 10% of Crimeans.

Among them are active opponents of what happened to the Crimea in 2014 year. It was the representatives of the Tatar community who were active participants in the 23 rally in February 2014, near the Crimean parliament building, where pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian activists clashed.

“What kind of annexation? If you say that, then I have nothing to talk to you about! It was annexation!” - this is how he responded to the correspondent’s call Bi-bi-si a farmer from the Dzhankoy region, an ethnic Tatar who once worked in the local administration.

According to the UN, from 1 January 2017 of the year to 30 of June 2018 of the year, 95 house searches were conducted in the Crimea on charges of terrorism and extremism. Of these, 86% dealt with Crimean Tatars.

For five years, the pressure on the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who oppose the annexation of the peninsula has not decreased, agrees lawyer Nikolai Polozov. “We see that the number of Ukrainian political prisoners is only growing. Currently there are already 73 people, most of them are Crimean Tatars,” the lawyer notes.

Divided future

In the center of Simferopol, a two-minute walk from the monument to “polite people,” two high school students are handing out flyers.

“Our life has not changed at all since 2014. Now we are paid for work not 20 hryvnia, but 100 rubles,” answers the question Bi-bi-si one of them.

“The buildings in Simferopol were restored, the city flourished, and they began to clean it up. And before you walk around, there are bulls and garbage everywhere,” - on the contrary, the other is happy.

They see their future differently. The student, who noted changes for the better, intends to graduate from a university “on the mainland” and return to live in Crimea, because he sees prospects for himself on the peninsula.

His comrade has a completely different attitude. “I want to live and study in Ukraine, in Kyiv. I do not want to live in Russia".

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