With ATMs failing, transport halted and food rationed, families on the peninsula are being pushed into a survival mode that could define everyday life for months.
Tomáš Čorej
Most shops and restaurants are required to close no later than nine in the evening. All street events have been cancelled until further notice.
Few things are as important to Vladimir Putin as Crimea.
When the Russian president annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014 in violation of international law, his domestic popularity skyrocketed to almost 90 percent.
“Crimea has become a central symbol of Putin’s effort to right the ‘wrongs’ that allegedly occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” explained Czech journalist Ondřej Soukup, who specialises in Russia, for Denník N.
All the more unpleasant for Kremlin propaganda are the reports that have been coming from there in recent weeks.
First, social networks were flooded with images of long lines at petrol stations. Later, information emerged that many people were no longer able to get fuel even on the black market.
At the same time, the peninsula is facing increasingly frequent power outages and the related loss of water. “For local residents this is an enormous tragedy,” Soukup said.
Maximum three kilos of sugar per person
Finding out exactly what life in Crimea looks like during the Ukrainian attacks is difficult, given Russian repression. Anonymous testimonies and posts on social networks, however, suggest that the situation is quite serious.
A particularly informative article was published by the Russian independent project iStories, which collected a number of detailed testimonies.
One woman from Sevastopol, for example, described how difficult it was these days to obtain certain foodstuffs. Residents often have to search for them across the entire city, because many shops are closed.
Travelling itself is quite difficult, because trolleybuses are not running due to extensive power cuts. iStories’ sources stressed that, because of the fuel shortage, the Crimean authorities have also restricted other forms of public transport, including buses.
More and more people are therefore using bicycles or walking.
Another problem for many Crimeans is paying. According to iStories’ sources, cards cannot be used in most shops, with only the Yabloko supermarkets as an exception. At the same time, an increasing number of ATMs on the peninsula are out of service.
Most shops that are open operate only thanks to generators and sell mainly non-perishable products. “The refrigerated display cases have been taped off with warning tape. From the smell, it seems that everything inside has already spoiled,” the woman told iStories.
She stressed that it was warm in the city these days – according to the current forecast, daytime temperatures there reach roughly 29 degrees.
The Crimean authorities restricted the sale of some basic foodstuffs already in the first half of June.
For example, the pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Krymskyi Vietor published a sign from Simferopol stating that a single customer could buy at most three kilos of sugar.
People in Crimea are not at risk of starvation; local sources reported that there was still enough rice and wheat on the peninsula. However, given the limits on purchasing certain types of food, the Krym.Realii project said that panic had broken out on the peninsula.
This matched the experience of the woman interviewed by iStories. According to her, at the beginning of the month “Crimeans rushed into the shops and bought everything they could.”
“We did the same. When we came back the next day, the shelves were already empty. People apparently panicked and bought everything up,” she said.
At the moment, the peninsula is operating under a regime that the Wall Street Journal described as a “lockdown”. In practice, this means that most shops and restaurants are required to close between eight and nine in the evening. All street events have been cancelled until further notice and street lighting is not turned on.
According to some local Telegram channels, motorbikes are not allowed to ride around the peninsula at night so as not to disturb air defence.
A humanitarian catastrophe is looming, expert warns
Putin has already commented on what is happening in Crimea. According to him, there were “some outages” on the peninsula, but they “were not critical”. On Sunday, the Russian president promised that fuel supplies to Crimea would be stepped up.
