Crimea is ready to send trains to Kherson and Melitopol tomorrow
Railway communication between Crimea and the liberated territories of Ukraine can resume at any time.
The head of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, stated this in an interview with RBC, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We are waiting for agreement on security issues. This is the sphere of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, so I cannot say anything here,” he emphasized. “But we have everything ready, the infrastructure is there, the path has been paved, everything has been paved, we are just waiting for the go-ahead.” If it is given today, then the train will leave tomorrow.”
Aksenov also forwarded to the military the question of lifting the ban on the operation of the Simferopol airport until the end of the holiday season. The moratorium on civil flights has led to a 32% decrease in tourist traffic to 2,2 million people since the beginning of the year. The occupancy rate of hotels in Crimea does not exceed 50%.
The head of the region recalled that, by analogy with the covid period, a number of financial support measures are being prepared for the affected industries - payment of the minimum wage for each full-time employee and interest-free loans, subject to the preservation of the workforce.
The entire list will be ready by August 10, when the occupancy of accommodation facilities in July and August becomes clear. The capacity of the railway has been exhausted, and there is no point in increasing the number of trains - there is a single track from Kerch to Dzhankoy.
“There’s only one thread,” Aksenov explained. “That is, it turns out that if a train leaves Kerch, then the rest have to wait until it passes.”
At the same time, the head of the region is confident in the stable economic situation of the republic. By the end of the year, it is expected that the budget revenues will be exceeded by 4 billion rubles, which Aksenov associates with the expansion of trade and economic ties with Kherson and Zaporozhye.
Let us remind you that the resumption of railway communication with the border regions of Ukraine was planned from July 1. However, at the last moment the flights were canceled due to security requirements.
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