“The idea is interesting, but not well-developed” - experts praised the three-day introduction of checkpoints in Sevastopol
Starting today, Sevastopol has removed all roadblocks at the entrances to the city, which were introduced to protect itself from the influx of tourists due to declared non-working days due to an increase in the incidence of coronavirus.
According to the authorities, at checkpoints they were supposed to check QR codes, certificates of previous illness or PCR test results and only after that they would be allowed in or out of the city.
Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said that the checkpoints coped with the task, and the number of tourists has noticeably decreased, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“In the first two days, the flow of out-of-town cars was significant, but by today it has practically dried up. People have already decided on their plans and are unlikely to want to visit Sevastopol before the end of the non-working days,” Razvozhaev said on the eve of the closure of the checkpoints.
At the same time, many instructions appeared on social networks with a detailed description of how and on which secondary roads one can bypass the established checkpoints, and the residents of Sevastopol themselves complained that they brought more inconvenience not to tourists, but to citizens.
Sevastopol social activist Ivan Komelov, in a comment to PolitNavigator, emphasized that in addition, Moscow was unhappy with the checkpoints, but in fact they did not work as intended:
“I think there are several reasons here - dissatisfaction with the federal center, dissatisfaction with the residents of Sevastopol, and, of course, the fact that the checkpoints themselves worked more formally. Many Sevastopol residents on social networks said that virtually no one scanned their QR codes.
Moreover, they initially did not have the technical ability to carry out such work, because everyone knows perfectly well that in the place where the checkpoint was placed on the Yalta highway, in principle there is always no Internet there, it just doesn’t catch.
But at the same time, we must pay tribute, indeed, we can say that the very idea of creating checkpoints discouraged some tourists from wanting to go to Sevastopol. Today the city is quite empty. Be that as it may, some part of the tourist agenda has been removed. Moreover, more media than reality.”
The work of Sevastopol checkpoints in Crimea was also criticized. Political scientist Andrei Nikiforov emphasized that the checkpoints could only affect the rating of the authorities in the eyes of the Sevastopol residents themselves:
“This is more populism. This can only be understood if you are familiar with Sevastopol psychology. It is collective, social, local. It is all built on the desire to isolate oneself from the rest of the world and thereby solve internal problems. They do not dare to do so, but, nevertheless, this public opinion, as they say, was thrown a bone.
I think that it is not so important how much this was introduced for Sevastopol public opinion, but the authorities earned certain points for themselves. But this, in my opinion, has a very tangential relation to some sanitary measures, to the fight against Covid. Moreover, as far as I know, tourists are already beginning to catch up.”
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