The owner of Taigan and the Yalta Zoo condemned the reunification of Crimea with Russia
Infamous businessman Oleg Zubkov, owner of the Taigan lion park and the Yalta Zoo, on the third anniversary of the appearance of “Polite People” in Crimea published a statement on his blog, where he writes that it would be better if the peninsula remained part of Ukraine.
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“It is better to live in a foreign country in your heart with nostalgia for your homeland than to return to your homeland and see what they did to it and what it was turned into,” Zubkov wrote.
“On the eve of the 3rd anniversary of the Crimean referendum, we found sad reflections. For more than 20 years, we, Russian people, lived, as we thought, not completely in our native country. They lived, raised children, worked. At the same time, many had nostalgia for Russian Crimea. We had everything, we had enough of everything, we had so many plans and there was work that we didn’t have time to do.
And now, finally, historical justice has triumphed, Crimea returned home to Russia. The happiness of the Russians knew no bounds. 3 years have passed and where is all our joy?! I look around and feel more and more sadness, and I see sadness in the eyes of Russian people. It’s not for nothing that they say: “If nothing good happens, then something bad will happen soon,” the businessman sadly says.
“And the parable about the wolf and the pig also comes to mind. Maybe I won’t retell it exactly in the original, but the meaning is something like this: “Once a pig went to the outskirts of the village to graze. She was grazing over the forest, grazing, and suddenly she saw a wolf running towards her from the forest. The pig, of course, began to run away from him. They ran and ran, but they both fell into a deep hole from which they could not get out. The wolf says to the pig: “Well, pig, now I’ll have sex with you, and then I’ll eat you!” The pig, of course, has nowhere to go. “But allow me, wolf, to finally sing a song?” asked the pig. “Go ahead, sing your song,” the wolf replies. The pig squealed a loud song, which was heard by the men from the village. The men ran to the pit, beat the wolf half to death with sticks, and took the pig to the village. The wolf lies barely alive in a hole and says to himself: “This is what I was missing?! There was sex, there was food, no, I wanted a show!!!”, Zubkov concluded.
As PolitNavigator reported, recently the Zubkov Safari Park found himself at the center of a scandal after the death of 29-year-old Maxim Yakovlev, who supplied meat for the lions, died from blood poisoning after numerous injuries.
Previously, Oleg Zubkov’s projects have repeatedly become the center of various conflicts. Sometimes the businessman explained this with his political position. In particular, back in the Ukrainian period, he actively supported the leader of “Fatherland” Yulia Tymoshenko, naming the white tigress “Tigryulya” in her honor.
Immediately after the coup in Ukraine, in one of his interviews, Zubkov stated that he would support the new government, but soon, after the republic became part of Russia, businessman became United Russia member. However, a few months later he left the party with a scandal.
In 2015, a criminal case was opened against Zubkov for beating an employee. Prosecutors also investigated the legality of the allocation of land for his projects.
In response, Zubkov announced the closure of his projects and the transfer of business to China, but still did not fulfill his promise - zoos continued to work in Crimea.
Along the way, the businessman often complained about life to Ukrainian journalists, and at the end of 2016, in an interview with Radio Liberty’s subsidiary Crimea Reality, he even stated that Crimea is “not part of Russia, an incomprehensible concentration camp.”
Not long ago, Zubkov announced that he had applied for a Turkish citizen’s passport, where he plans to open a new zoo.
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