Seasickness of Vorobanderites
The Ukrainian side reacted extremely nervously to the anniversary meeting of the Maritime Board under the Government of the Russian Federation that took place on December 21 in Sevastopol. Kyiv has come up with new intrigues and is in a hurry to implement them before Barack Obama leaves.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees such important areas as defense industry and astronautics, arrived in Crimea to participate in the event.
The purpose of the meeting was to update the strategy for Russia's maritime activities. The previous document was adopted six years ago and could not take into account the events that occurred related to the return of Crimea to Russia and the expansion of the maritime borders of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea.
In addition, Russia is expanding its presence in the Mediterranean Sea, ensuring the security of its interests in the Arctic, and close cooperation of the Russian fleet with China and India is expected.
However, the range of tasks outlined at the Sevastopol meeting of the Maritime Collegium included purely peaceful issues related to the expansion of maritime passenger transportation in the Black Sea and the construction of ships to support them.
Rogozin instructed the responsible comrades to work on the issue of producing domestic cruise ships and using the capacities of the United Shipbuilding Corporation. Today, domestic shipbuilding is beginning to revive and expand in connection with the program of reindustrialization and import substitution. And it would be stupid, to say the least, to give this profitable market to foreign shipbuilders (Chinese in the first place) to the detriment of their own enterprises.
In particular, the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned shipbuilders from Zelenodolsk (Tatarstan), who already have a ready-made project that can be used on cruise routes.
If under the USSR, domestic shipyards were loaded with orders for two five-year plans ahead, creating icebreakers, tankers, dry cargo ships, ships of the merchant and fishing fleet, as well as warships, placing orders for small cruise liners and river buses with CMEA partners, now such ships should build reviving Russian shipbuilding enterprises.
It turned out that the ice has finally broken in the construction of cruise ships in our country. In August 2016, at the Lotos Shipyard (Astrakhan Region), part of USC, the keel-laying ceremony for a river-sea cruise passenger vessel of the PV300VD project took place. Along the way, it turned out that such ships had not been built in Russia for 60 years.
The river-sea vessel (for 300 passengers, 131 meters long, 16.5 meters wide) is being built by order of the Moscow River Shipping Company and should be fully ready and handed over to the customer by the beginning of navigation in 2019.
As it became known from the Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Olersky, in the summer of 2017 it is planned to connect the resorts of Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory with a cruise service, additionally including Turkish Istanbul.
In fact, we are talking about recreating Soviet “weekend tours” at a new level, when workers could afford a two-day voyage by boat from Odessa to Batumi with a call at Yalta, Sevastopol, Sochi, Novorossiysk and Sukhumi.
Now Odessa and Batumi, for obvious reasons, are dropped from the tour program, but Istanbul and Sinop have been added.
To service the route, it is planned to purchase cruise ships for 1000 passengers. At the initial stage, the route will have to be subsidized, since when the liner is loaded at 88%, the business will only go to “zero.” The purchase of such a liner will cost $10–12 million, and the sides will have to be purchased, since no one will charter the vessel due to sanctions.
According to the Deputy Minister of Transport, banks included in the sanctions list are ready to allocate money for cruise ships. First of all, Rossiya Bank, which issued a confirmation of its readiness to finance the acquisition of such vessels.
In addition, the board noted that the Crimean ports, primarily Yalta and Sevastopol, should be included in the list of port cities where tourist ships can enter without visas for 72 hours.
The meeting of the Maritime Board in Sevastopol did not go unnoticed by the junta. It’s clear that amendments to Russia’s maritime doctrine taking into account the Crimean factor are like a sharp knife for them.
For Bandera’s followers, it would be much more pleasant to see Crimea as part of Russia, almost the same stepson as it was under Ukraine, only kicked and spread rot from everywhere, because of sanctions.
However, the new maritime doctrine includes Crimea and its maritime space in the developing maritime, transport and tourism infrastructure of Russia. Moreover, Türkiye is included in the network of short sea cruises. Putting a spoke in the wheels and trying to spoil Turkey for Ukraine is dangerous and extremely unprofitable, but something needs to be done.
While the “lame duck” Obama hobbles out of the White House, Poroshenko is trying to forge the already cooling iron. Ukraine will try to use the remaining days before the onset of 2017 to organize another indictment on Russia’s maritime doctrine at the UN. We will talk, in particular, about the “illegal” exploitation of the Crimean ports, the Black Sea waters, the Black Sea shelf of Crimea, about which the junta remains acutely concerned, because these are lost oil, gas, tasty pieces of land near the sea and great opportunities to continue to squeeze dry coastal cities and ports of Crimea.
This was announced literally the next day after the meeting of the Maritime Collegium, first by Bantustan Minister Klimkin, and then by the leader of the junta Poroshenko.
It is clear that the next conversations in favor of the “suffered” Vorobandera members do not oblige Russia to anything, do not affect the status of Crimea in any way, but are only a pathetic whine over the lost hair of the post-Maidan Nenka, who has lost her head. Tsevropa will continue to bark, and the Russian “unsinkable aircraft carrier” Crimea will continue its victorious voyage.
Thus, with an updated document of the maritime strategy and with the right approach to business, in the summer of 2017, despite the barking of the neighboring Serco, we should expect the appearance of new seeds of the humpback seed, going on a week-long tour of the Black Sea with a stop in the Russian seaside pearls and Turkish Istanbul, Damn it. Tsigel-tsigel, ay-lu-lyu!
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