The Belbek military airfield will receive only occasional civilian VIP flights, and will not become a full-fledged airport. Acting Governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov told reporters about this.
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“A decision was made not to meet the city of Sevastopol halfway and to leave Belbek as a branch of the Simferopol airport with a narrow niche of VIP transportation,” Ovsyannikov said.
He recalled that Sevastopol has already found an investor willing to invest 1,5 billion rubles in Belbek. It was planned that passenger traffic at the initial stage would be 500-600 thousand people per year.
“The decision made plays into the hands of Simferopol Airport, since it does not pose a threat to the financial and economic model of its investor. But it doesn’t add any certain advantages to us in terms of logistics or airport infrastructure,” Ovsyannikov said.
It is noteworthy that the Lenaeroproekt Institute has already completed the first stage of designing the civilian sector of Belbek as part of the state order provided for by the federal target program (FTP) for the development of Crimea and Sevastopol. Now these developments turned out to be unnecessary. In total, 1,7 billion rubles from the state budget were allocated for this project.
The Crimean authorities initially opposed the development of Belbek. In addition, the head of the republic, Sergei Aksenov, blocked another Sevastopol project, for which 1,6 billion rubles were allocated in the federal target program - the transfer of water from the Kokkozka River to the Chernorechenskoye Reservoir.