The food blockade of Crimea played into the hands of Russian producers, and most of all it hit the Crimean Tatars, who transport goods from Ukraine, writes Moskovsky Komsomolets, noting that trucks are still slowly passing through.
Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Kyiv" in Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
“They say the secret is that the leaders of the Majlis and the Right Sector, banned in Russia, found a way to replenish the budgets of their groups at the same time as a PR campaign,” the newspaper writes. “For an additional fee, they allow trucks with goods to enter Crimea.”
The Crimean Tatars themselves living in Crimea are also dissatisfied with what is happening.
“I have been selling Kherson vegetables for several years now,” the publication quotes entrepreneur Refat Seit-Uierov from Simferopol as saying. “How can I feed my family now if I can’t bring my goods to Crimea?”
And apple merchant Vladimir Belozerov from Yevpatoria says that he will try to bring goods to the peninsula: “I will still go to Kherson for goods, because this is my only bread. I don’t know if it will be possible to carry it, but I will ask, because there, on the other side, there are also people standing, just like us. They must understand us."
In turn, Crimean political scientist, deputy head of the Public Chamber of Crimea Alexander Formanchuk believes that the blockade affected the Crimean Tatars on the peninsula the most.
“They are mostly entrepreneurs engaged in the supply of vegetables and fruits from the Kherson region,” Formanchuk emphasized. “That is why they did not support the Ukrainian food blockade and along with it their former leaders Refat Chubarov and Mustafa Dzhemilev. As for the Crimean retail chains, they successfully reoriented themselves to the Russian trade market in a year and a half. So both supermarkets and markets in Crimea are unlikely to be empty.”