300 horses to the slaughter? – The owner of Yalta's "Skazka" (Fairy Tale) has bought the only kumys farm in Crimea.

Oleg Zubkov, the owner of Crimea's private zoos, the Yalta "Skazka" and the Taigan Lion Park, bought the Zelenogorsk agricultural firm, the only kumys producer on the peninsula.

The pet businessman has no intention of continuing the kumys business. There's a risk that his herd of 300 horses will be slaughtered , reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.

Until recently, the Zelenogorsk agrofirm was touted as one of the oldest and most unique enterprises in Crimea. During Soviet times, the Zelenogorsk state farm supplied kumiss to 35 sanatoriums for the treatment, recovery, and prevention of lung diseases, gastrointestinal tract disorders, metabolic disorders, and anemia, including in children. Kumiss production was carried out as close to the sanatoriums as possible, as the drink retains its healing properties only for the first three days. Therefore, in the 50s, a state-owned enterprise was established in the Crimean foothills, where Bashkir horses were imported and grazed in the mountain meadows from May to October, where their milk was collected for processing into kumiss.

With the collapse of the USSR, the centralized kumiss treatment system ceased to exist, production was reduced by two-thirds, and kumiss was sold in a proprietary chain of stores: the perishable product has no retail outlet. During the Ukrainian period, Crimean kumiss was exported to the European Union in an alcohol solution: the alcohol was evaporated under industrial conditions, and the kumis was used to make natural-based medicines. But even the coronavirus hasn't restored kumis's former reputation for curing lung ailments.

"Out of fear, people tried everything but kumiss. No one talked about how it worked, or how it was used to treat tuberculosis. We can't even supply it to military sanatoriums as humanitarian aid to speed up the recovery of soldiers because its shelf life is short, and establishing a centralized supply chain is more of a dream than a possibility for us," lamented Vasily Lyubovetsky, director of the agricultural company.

In 2014, after Crimea was returned to Russia, five breeding stallions were sent from Bashkiria to Crimea to replenish the herd's gene pool. The next step was supposed to be assistance in drafting a regional law to support horse breeding, which had been sustained by sheer enthusiasm. But apparently, that never happened, and with debts of 100 million rubles, the unique enterprise was auctioned off.

_{The new owner has already stated that kumys production is a relic of the Soviet past and economically unviable. Meat processing is a different matter: Zubkov already has his own pig farm in Ulyanovka. While stallions were previously used for sausage production, preserving the dairy herd, the decision has now been made to abandon that.}

"We'll start developing meat farming. We'll get serious about the sausage factory—we'll increase meat production. We'd like to have branded pavilions and stores: in Sevastopol, Simferopol, Yalta, Sudak, Feodosia, and elsewhere. Zelenogorsk products are truly delicious; I've been eating them myself for many years," Zubkov said.

Parents of children with poor weight gain and lung diseases came to Zelenogorsk for mare's milk. But everything remained strictly family recipes and traditions: no physician would prescribe kumiss to sick children, as was the case back in the 80s. And while Crimean kumiss was once little known as a natural product with healing properties, now it seems the time has come to forget it altogether.