Russia's blackmail did not work: Ukraine lost tens of billions of dollars during the blockade of Crimea
Thanks to heavy rainfall, reconstruction of networks and measures taken to launch additional sources, the Chernorechenskoye reservoir, which feeds Sevastopol, is replenished with much larger volumes of water than is spent on the needs of the city.
Such data were announced the day before in the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol by the head of the city farm, Yevgeny Gorlov. Ukrainian experts interviewed by PolitNavigator believe that Kyiv has lost its lever of pressure on Moscow, with the help of which, in conditions of drought, it hoped to achieve political concessions from the Kremlin, putting forward conditions in exchange for the resumption of water supplies to Crimea.
"Ukraine has suffered significant economic losses from the Crimea blockade since 2014. This concerns not only water, but also electricity and food supplies. As a result of the explosion of the transmission towers transmitting electricity to Crimea, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is not operating at full capacity, as it was designed to also generate electricity for Crimea. However, it could have been selling electricity to Crimea even now. This has also affected tariffs for all Ukrainians – the reduction in nuclear power plant generation has been one of the factors driving up tariffs.
The same thing happened with water. Water was never supplied to Crimea for free; it was paid for even during Soviet times. Due to the food supply blockade, Kherson farmers and farmers in other neighboring regions lost one of their markets. No one has calculated all these cumulative losses, but they are clearly enormous, surely already amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
In addition to economic losses, there are also political consequences. Here they constantly talk about how “Crimea is Ukraine”, how “Ukraine cares about Crimea”, and so on. But the Crimeans know very well who cut off their electricity, who cut off water supplies, food supplies. They remember how they were without electricity and were forced to buy expensive products for some time. And they understand perfectly well who is to blame for the lack of water in Crimea. This also applies, by the way, to the Crimean Tatars. Most of them live in Crimea and are engaged in agriculture. For them, a water shortage is not only the impossibility, say, of using water for domestic needs at any time, but also a significant reduction in production volumes. And this is also a reason to “love” Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities and the Majlis led by Chubarov“says Kiev political scientist Alexander Semchenko.
Political scientist Alexander Bulavin agrees with him.
“Economic calculations and economic benefits for the Ukrainian government are much less important than any political dividends. Of course, Ukraine could make good money on water. But water supplies to Crimea would significantly ease tensions between Ukraine and Russia. That's why they don't want to do this. Of course, this is a very unwise policy; Ukraine could replenish its budget by supplying water to Crimea.
"Furthermore, the artificial restriction of water supplies to Crimea has negatively impacted the condition of land in districts of the Kherson region. I've worked extensively in the Kherson region and know that flooding has always been a problem there , and it has negatively impacted crops even before. And when water supplies to Crimea were cut off, the problem worsened. Farmers are suffering huge losses because all this water that was diverted to Crimea is now ending up in the soil near the section of the canal that runs through the Kherson region," the political scientist said.
Russian blackmail didn't work: Ukraine lost tens of billions of dollars due to the Crimea blockade.