The war between businessmen and officials continues on the Ai-Petri plateau
The mayor of Yalta, Yanina Pavlenko, personally clears the site at the upper station of the Miskhor - Ai-Petri cable car from illegal trade. Plastic and slate are flying into the bodies of KamAZ trucks, police are counting seized ATVs and other attributes of entertainment and trading activities on the plateau.
Over the past few years, this has happened here twice: on the eve of the holiday season and at its end, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Pavlenko dedicated her trip to Ai-Petri to everyone who conducts illegal business in the territory of Greater Yalta. The structural units of the administration cannot cope with this work on their own, so the mayor has to fulfill the duties of municipal control. She took with her 7 KamAZ trucks and 40 municipal workers.
“Anyone who conducts this type of business illegally will be liquidated from the territory of Greater Yalta,” the official said. – I urge you: remove your illegal objects. Today we will clear here, tomorrow we will come to the village of Okhotnichiy, and the day after tomorrow we will clear the entire territory of Greater Yalta.”
A similar situation occurred at Ai-Petri last year. Then employees of the department of municipal control of the Yalta administration stopped the illegal operation of 18 retail outlets at the upper station of the cable car on Ai-Petri in May, and in November the trade in food and souvenirs flourished in conjunction with the collection of cash in the municipal parking lot. Similar activities were stopped a year earlier during a joint raid by municipal control and the police.
The Ai-Petri plateau began to be cleared of shalmans in 2017. By that time, there were about 110 objects on the illegal market - cafes, souvenir shops, kebab shops. Officially, in 2002, the territory was rented by the Sharm company for a tourist complex, but instead it was subleased to traders, while simultaneously renting their stalls.
For several years, this scheme brought income to traders and, especially, members of the illegal Crimean Tatar Mejlis, recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation. When bailiffs and the Berkut special forces climbed to the plateau in 2007, members of the Mejlis staged an action of disobedience threatening to explode gas cylinders doused with gasoline.
For almost 10 years, the illegal market without water and sewerage, with camels, horses, and ATVs, continued to exist. The then Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government, Ruslan Balbek, took charge of its liquidation. But instead of the demolished shops, new ones appeared, most often mobile ones, set up in trailers and minibuses. During the holiday season, thousands of tourists climb the cable car to Ai-Petri, but they have nothing to do with themselves on the site.
The company engaged in contracting work in the Mriya sanatorium-resort complex and the cable car management company Startinvest proposed their projects for the development of the territory. But first it is necessary to repair the Bakhchisarai-Yalta highway passing through Ai-Petri. This project was included in the new edition of the state program for the development of Crimea until 2025.
The war between businessmen and officials continues on the Ai-Petri plateau.