What is the trip to the peninsula on a single ticket, checked the correspondent of "VP"
To be honest, when our government announced that tickets to Crimea that had become Russian would be cheap, it was hard to believe. Well, when did it happen that prices went down? Unless it was under Stalin. But it turns out that nothing is impossible, not only rivers, but prices can also be reversed!
Friends tell miracles about how, through the Dobrolet airline, they flew to the Crimea, to Simferopol for a thousand rubles. “Well, of course, don’t look for cheap tickets on the site - they have long been sold out for the whole summer, just like compartments on trains,” my friend warned me, the kindest, by the way, soul person.
How, I think, my colleague Maxim Kostin flew to Simferopol perfectly, spent a week on the Crimean beaches with pleasure and returned back to St. Petersburg for only eight thousand? And I'm worse? One thing is embarrassing: I'm afraid of these same planes, like Adriano Celentano of heights, so I prefer to travel by train. Moreover, it is interesting to check how these single tickets work, about which we have been told so much.
One in action
So, I go to the railway ticket office (one can only be ordered there!), I stand in a long queue and ask the cashier to issue travel documents for a family of three. The girl, hearing that I needed three single tickets to Kerch, leaned out of the window and nervously shouted to the queue: “Well, you got it! I issue tickets to the Crimea "round trip", so don't stand still, go to other ticket offices...".
It looked very funny, but then it became clear how right she was: the cashier fiddled with our travel documents for about half an hour, kept everything in time, docked the ferry, bus and train, even took into account the fact that it was possible to linger at the crossing due to bad weather, and eventually gave us tickets ... for three side seats - good in one car, because the rest - more comfortable - were sold. Yes, it has become difficult to travel to Crimea by train - these are not transit trains through Ukraine, as before. Although they still go now, of course, they only carry their own, who do not need to issue a special permit, as well as Russian children under 16, women and retired men - others are closed through the Zhovto-Blakitnaya road.
The cashier wrote us tickets to Anapa, then gave us a ticket for a bus that was supposed to take us to the port of Kavkaz. And then - the ferry and the city that you need: the ancient Panticapaeum, aka Kerch. Or Feodosia. The whole journey will take two days, and the cost of the road is within three and a half thousand rubles.
Now about the prices in more detail. If the train tickets to Anapa (with the same success it was possible to take a ticket to Krasnodar - here everyone chooses an acceptable option for themselves) were at the usual price, then the cost of a single bus - ferry - bus to, say, the Kerch bus station struck me with its cheapness: only 150 rubles. To Simferopol, Yalta, Feodosia, Sudak - 350 rubles. The most expensive road is from Anapa to Sevastopol. You can come to the city of Russian sailors for 430 re (more expensive from Krasnodar - for 830 rubles). But everything is relative. And when you find out that in the port of "Kavkaz" regular ferry tickets cost about the same as you paid for the bus from Anapa plus the ferry plus the bus to Kerch, and you do not soar in line for tickets, then everything falls into place. After all, if you are traveling without a single one and do not want to stand in lines at the bus station, then there is only one way: you take a taxi to the Kavkaz port for 700 rubles and again run to the ticket office - now for a ferry ticket.
One bad thing - not all trains have air conditioning. “Sorry we don’t have dry closets,” the conductor began to apologize for no reason when we entered the train car to Anapa, which sounded like a mockery, because driving in the heat without air conditioning is an unbearable extreme.
It was also annoying that we found out about 30 percent discounts on the coupe when we had already reached Anapa. Simple calculations showed that our reserved seat, taking into account these discounts, cost as much as a coupe. The people, having oriented themselves for a long time, quickly sorted out these tickets.
And the Greeks have a siesta
The road was fast and comfortable - it took us two hours to drive up to the port. It can be seen from the window that all the fields, if they do not turn yellow with sunflowers, are covered with vineyards. Apparently, this year there will be a lot of wine for the joy of everyone and everything. On the road there are billboards with announcements: "Excursions to the winery", "Sheep for sale ..." Neighbors in the bus, mostly with children, go to rest as "savages".
“We called one Feodosia sanatorium and found out that a ticket for one person costs 50 thousand rubles. We can’t afford it, so we will look for something in the private sector,” says Elena, a mother of two small children.
“And I’m going to Evpatoria to find out if it’s possible to suspend the sale,” says Irina. “They told me that legal assistance can be obtained from United Russia offices, which are located throughout the peninsula.”
Here is the Kavkaz port, opened a year before one very famous corn lover transferred Crimea to Ukraine, that is, in 1953. It is located on the eastern side of the Kerch Strait, and from it to Kerch itself is a stone's throw - only half an hour. The queue for the ferry from cars is huge. Drivers are nervous: cars stand for many hours, but there is no other way. One thing is clear: the crossing is not yet very coping with the loads, so its large-scale modernization is being prepared.
Passengers are transported by 4 ferries, two of them are Greek, two are domestic, you can get to the shores of Taurida and on catamarans - from Anapa it will take only three hours. I have nothing against our brothers in Christ, the Orthodox Greeks, but, to be honest, they do not know how to work. Here we attribute all the troubles to Russian laziness, but it is nothing compared to Greek ...
I'll give you an example. We loaded onto the Ionas ferry and at first we were glad: the escalators that took us to the upper deck coped well with the load, the existence of the buffet was also impressive, again European-quality repair, TVs at every step. The road is 30 minutes, and we were already anticipating that in a couple of hours we would go to the beach and take off road fatigue in the sea, but no such luck! The sea surged, it became restless, the sky was covered with clouds, a storm warning was announced, as a result, we had to stand idle for four hours, because this vaunted Ionas of theirs no longer roars with a wind of 15 meters per second ... In addition, the buffet, as luck would have it, does not I worked, there was nowhere to eat, I had to save food and water, then a rumor spread that we would be stuck until the evening.
However, to everyone's joy, the weather quickly changed - the sun came out, and cormorants lined up on the stones, but ... our Greeks did not even think of setting off. It turns out that their afternoon rest has begun, the fiesta, then. There are a lot of people - out of four buses, and thirty cars that fit below, there is no food and water. In a word, a whole delegation went to the Greeks for negotiations. The women shouted that while the weather was normal, we urgently needed to go to the other side, the children were crying, and the foreign sailors at that moment... were sleeping. “What a rest,” a Russian man of strong physique was indignant. “If you haven’t had problems before, you will now.” It worked. As well as a complaint written by hand on a piece of paper, under which thirty people signed. It cannot be said that the Greeks, who hitherto pretended that they did not fully speak Russian, did not understand our people. Understood. And started the engine.
The most polite people
And then the port "Crimea" appeared. Russian and Crimean flags are everywhere, the flag of Kerch in a red and white stripe, joyful faces: they say, Russia is our home ... We noticed flags even in the gardens - this is the best proof of the mood of the Crimeans.
We go to the bus station, disembark. “Be sure to write down the phone number of the unified transport service,” the driver informs us, “whatever happens.” And exactly. This phone was useful to us when we were about to leave - it turns out that we had to leave not from the bus station, to which we arrived from Anapa, but from the port "Kerch" on Kirov Street.
“We returned home” is a phrase that has been heard almost at every turn. And stories - who voted and how. Everyone, even the ninety-year-old old women, went to the referendum - such was the nationwide upsurge. “We are only afraid that Poroshenko will want to retake the Crimea, because our elders say that the Black Sea will burn with fire,” says the regent of the local church Tatyana...
“We are now a world power, and President Putin will not let us get hurt,” Valentina, a retired engineer, stops her. “Of course, we still need to go through a transitional period, but we will not return to Ukraine again.”
In general, there is a huge interest in Putin here. There are many T-shirts on the local market for three hundred re with portraits of the Russian president. “Do you see the inscription: “The most polite of people”? - the seller shows a white T-shirt. “This is the last one, they are gone.” There are other things with inscriptions: "Crimeans are so severe that they moved to Russia with their own peninsula." And in the course of the "chip" - to portray along with "polite people" cats.
The guy willingly says that when “polite people” came to Crimea, who took over the protection of citizens, they had exclusively peaceful intentions - they did not fire a single shot and gave the children a cat.
I must say that at first the Crimeans were afraid: would the beaches be empty? Ukrainian television savored the footage of the empty coast with might and main, apparently to please its citizens with the fact that it is bad in Crimea without them, because in recent years it was the Ukrainians who made up the main contingent of vacationers. It's true, no one remembers how sideways all this went to the peninsula - until recently in Koktebel, behind the crowds of "nezalezhnyh" tourists, even the House-Museum of Maximilian Voloshin was not visible! To get to him, you had to work hard with your elbows and strain your eyesight. But in vain did the Ukrainian "TV broadcast" try - in June, when it was raining and it was relatively cold (plus 22 during the day, plus 18 at night), there were really few people. But in July, when the 30-degree heat began, vacationers poured down the shaft.
This, of course, affected prices - alcohol has risen in price by 50 rubles, some products by 10 - 20 - 30 rubles. So, a bottle of dry red wine - Massandra Cabernet at the end of June cost 100 rubles, and a week later it was already 20 rubles more. The same metamorphoses occurred with other Massandra brands - with "Muskatel" (white), "Kokur" (canteen).
Cheeses for two hundred or three hundred rubles per kg, sausages - for three hundred - four hundred rubles. But the most important thing: fruits - peaches, cherries - a hundred rubles each. Dried fish of medium length - about two hundred rubles apiece.
I will not tease the imagination of readers, I will only say that it was sometimes more profitable to dine in restaurants and cafes than to cook at home: rapana baked in foil - 150 rubles, pelengas - 180 rubles, a large portion of mussels fried with onions - 180 "wooden" ...
Mud, sun and water...
There are few locals in restaurants, however, as well as at sea. "Like sea?" — the people of Kerch once asked us, who had not yet opened the sea season. “Excellent, warm, 22 degrees,” we answered, and immediately caught their surprised look: “Where did you come from? From St. Petersburg? Then it’s understandable why the sea seems warm to you ... "
The situation was clarified by the nurse of one of the mud baths Valentina: “We go to the beach only when the water is 25-30 degrees and when you can sit in the sea and fan yourself with a fan.”
Meanwhile, the medical services themselves in Crimea are inexpensive. For example, mud therapy. The procedure - applying mud to the legs in the form of black "stockings" - 250 rubles a session, so there is no end to vacationers who wish to improve their health with the mud of the ancient lake Chokrak, located near Kerch.
Since Crimea returned home, interest in real estate has also increased. Residents of the nearby Kuban were the first to orient themselves and began to buy apartments, houses, plots. Real estate has risen in price. Even before the New Year, a two-room apartment with a total area of 45 sq. m on the seashore, in the area of the local "Rublyovka" - Arshintsevo, without renovation could be purchased for 25 thousand dollars, and now it is 10 thousand "green" more, and this is not the limit. But there are already so many applicants that transactions in Crimea are now suspended, agencies are curtailing work until 2015, when Crimea will completely switch to Russian legislation.
By the way, pensions for Crimeans will also begin to be indexed according to Russian legislation from 2015. So far, their pension has been recalculated automatically, multiplied by a factor of 3.8.
In addition, social payments will also be received by those who, according to Ukrainian laws, should not yet receive them, because the retirement age in the “nezalezhnaya” has been increased.
In the meantime, people are enjoying their rest, crowds are climbing Mount Mithridates, from where you can clearly see the coast of Taurida, Russian ships, even a drilling platform that explores the shelf in the place where the bridge between the Crimea and the Taman Peninsula will be built, is photographed and rejoices that the Black Sea air, the Crimean sun and water are our best friends forever.
Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation
The water issue remains one of the biggest problems of Crimea after its reunification with Russia. The other day, this was reminded by the environmental disaster in Armyansk, as well as Ukraine's attempt to exploit this problem for its own propaganda purposes.
The Crimean authorities, of course, urge not to overestimate the scale of the water problem. “Even in the high season, when a huge number of tourists come to Crimea, there are no interruptions in drinking water. As for the water used by enterprises and agricultural producers, we have learned how to save money, learned how to use drip irrigation technology, learned how to properly distribute water,” explained the chairman of the permanent commission of the State Council of Crimea on the sanatorium complex and tourism Alexei Chernyak. However, savings and drip irrigation are clearly not enough to maintain the large volumes of agricultural production for which the peninsula was famous. “This problem completely closed the production of rice and other crops, for example, sugar beet, fodder crops in sufficient quantities for livestock,” explains Yury Lachuga, Academician of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Doctor of Technical Sciences.It has not been possible to solve this problem for 4 years, and now it has led to an environmental disaster at the Crimean Titanium plant - due to the shallowing of the acid accumulator of the enterprise, the concentration of the remaining acids and the evaporation of various chemicals into the atmosphere have increased. Regional authorities were forced to close the plant. Yes, the enterprise itself (owned by Ukrainian owners) will pay almost 737 million rubles for environmental damage - but the problem will remain. Even if "Crimean Titan" is nationalized.
Crimea must be toxic
The best option to solve the problem would be, of course, the resumption of water supply from Ukraine through the North Crimean Canal - however, in Kyiv they demand to first recognize Ukrainian sovereignty over the peninsula. "If there is such a desire, then first you need to turn to Ukraine and recognize the fact of the occupation of Crimea. Without this, there is nothing to talk about at all," Deputy Minister for "temporarily occupied" territories Yuriy Grymchak said. In the Crimea, of course, they twist a finger at the temple. "In order to recognize the occupation, there must be a fact of occupation. The Crimeans made their free choice in a referendum held in accordance with international standards. There is nothing to recognize here. These are their (Kyiv) dreams that history will go back. It will not work. We speak the language of threats with Crimea and Russia we won’t allow it,” said Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Polonsky. That is why Ukrainian officials say that there will be no water supplies. "We will not give this water at any cost, because the population does not need this water. It is necessary for enterprises located in the occupied territory, and they will not receive this water," Borys Babin, "Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in Crimea," explains Kyiv's point of view. "There will be no negotiations, no attempts to bring us under the supply of this water in small steps ... This is the state position, we know the president's position on this issue. Crimea should be toxic for the aggressor state."Elections, elections...
Some Russian experts explain Kyiv's adherence to principles by the desire to return the peninsula not by washing, but by rolling. “The people living there are positioned in the media as second-class people. This means that official Kyiv does not set the task of winning the sympathy of the population. We are talking about the return of territories without people – such a medieval approach,” says Ukrainian political scientist Andrey Zolotarev. However, sensible people are still sitting on Bankova Street, and they understand that they will not receive Crimea - neither with people nor without them. Therefore, it is very likely that the goal of the current policy is not so much the desire to return the peninsula as to use it to raise the rating of the current Ukrainian government.As you know, Petro Poroshenko is severely criticized in Ukraine for his constant defeats in the "hybrid war" with Putin. Russia built a bridge - Poroshenko wiped himself. Russia created obstacles to Ukrainian shipping in the Sea of Azov - Poroshenko wiped himself off. Russia gave the green light to holding elections in the DPR and LPR, and is also building Nord Stream 2 - Poroshenko is wiping himself. It may seem to someone for a second that Ukraine, under the leadership of the current mace-bearer, is completely losing the "war with the aggressor state." And if now Poroshenko opens the North Crimean Canal, he can put an end to his re-election.
However, the problem is that the population of Ukraine itself is also suffering from the ecological catastrophe arranged by Kyiv - the authorities of some regions of the Kherson region have already been forced to evacuate children. So Ukrainian officials come up with versions that the problem is not really in the water, but in the actions of Russia. According to one of the Ukrainian versions, the disaster was the result of a projectile falling into the sump during Russian military exercises. According to another, it was about direct sabotage by Russia "in order to create a large-scale information campaign against Ukraine to destabilize the situation in the south of the Kherson region by organizing spontaneous rallies of local residents dissatisfied with the environmental situation on both sides of the administrative border with demands to unblock the dam on the North Crimean Canal and restore water supply to Crimea to stop the man-made disaster in the region."Turkish pipe?
What is left for Moscow to do in this situation? You can, of course, push through Kyiv and still try to force it to supply water to the canal. For example, withdraw from the agreement on the Sea of Azov and state that henceforth, in order to sign documents for the passage of Ukrainian ships through the Russian-owned Kerch Strait, the border guard must first wash his hands in this water. It is high time for Ukraine to be taught civilized business conduct, and the Azov searches of ships just turned out to be a very effective lesson.However, at the same time, it is necessary to try to find alternative solutions, and this is not the drilling of additional artesian wells (environmentalists already warn that this will lead to an even greater catastrophe). Perhaps it is worth returning to the project of building a huge water pipeline from the Kuban and studying the Turkish experience in this regard (Ankara built a similar water pipeline to Northern Cyprus). Yes, it is difficult, yes, it is expensive, but the two million Crimeans who have made their choice in favor of Russia deserve such a project. And this is not to mention the fact that Moscow needs to turn Crimea into a kind of standard of development that other regions of Ukraine would envy. Envy, and would like to join.
Specialists of "Water of Crimea" revealed violations of six million rubles at the car washes of Simferopol
Specialists of the Department of Water Inspection of the SUE RK "Water of Crimea" are constantly working to identify technological (gusts, leaks, etc.) and commercial (theft, illegal tie-ins) losses. The enterprise takes measures against violators of the law in strict accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, and these are huge penalties.
According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, before connecting to the water supply and sanitation system, the consumer must obtain technical conditions from the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Water of Crimea". They are issued by the production and technical department, whose specialists think about which networks to connect subscribers to so as not to harm the environment and other consumers.
Despite the very serious consequences for the entire Crimea of such thoughtless consumption of water resources, people go to the violation of the law.
In September and October, the Department of Water Inspection of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Water of Crimea" carried out inspections of car washes in the city of Simferopol. In total, about 80 objects were checked, of which gross violations were detected at four, namely, illegal tie-ins into the water disposal system (sewerage), - said Alexander Abetsyunas, head of the water inspection department of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Kazakhstan "Water of Crimea". - For violations, the owners were billed in the amount of about 6 million rubles. he added.
According to Alexander Abetsyunas, fines for unauthorized connection to water disposal (sewage) networks are much higher than for non-contractual use of water supply networks.
For example, for illegal tapping into the sewerage system, a fine of 9 to 10 thousand rubles is provided - and this is only for a day.
Identification and prevention of technological losses (hidden leaks, gusts) is also one of the tasks of the water inspection department.
During the period from September to October, going to the branches of the enterprise, we revealed 68 hidden leaks - said Alexander Abetsiunas. - We are helping to conduct work in this direction and SUE RK "Krymteplokommunenergo". Two weeks ago, we managed to identify 8 large hidden leaks in the networks of Krymteplokommunenergo.
The language of numbers
For the period from August to October, specialists of water inspections in the branches of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Water of Crimea” revealed 57 illegal taps into the water supply and sanitation system. Issued invoices in the amount of 14 million 662 thousand 918 rubles. 28 kopecks, of which 4 million 85 thousand 699 rubles were paid. 39 kop.
More news
The Russian government will spend 19 billion rubles, said Deputy Minister of Economic Development of Russia Sergey Nazarov. According to the official, a three-stage program to reduce water shortages will be implemented in the next three years. It provides for the creation of infrastructure to provide the eastern regions of the peninsula from three underground sources in its central part.
Meanwhile, the channel "First Krymsky" reports that the locals are empty. The story of the journalists says: there is now a different “pattern” near the shore of the Simferopol reservoir - the land areas have become larger. Local residents are wary of the changes, but the Russian authorities of the peninsula assure that the situation is not critical. According to the deputy head of the Russian-controlled State Committee for Water Management and Land Reclamation Andrey Lisovsky, the volumes of water in the reservoir correspond to the long-term average.
Russian independent expert, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Yuri Medovar I am convinced that exploiting the underground waters of Crimea is not an option.
Using groundwater for land reclamation is a crime, it is a very expensive pleasure
Yuri Medovar
– I have said more than once that the 21st century is the century of wars for water. There is not enough water resources not only in the Crimea, but throughout the world. The North Crimean Canal once gave the peninsula a second life. We were approached from one Crimean organization with a request to help with groundwater, I am a specialist in it. But the fact is that using them for land reclamation is a crime, it is a very expensive pleasure. There are not so many clean underground waters in the Crimea, due to their development, brackish waters that cannot be drunk are pulled up from below. In addition, the soil does not receive enough nutrition from below, therefore it is being transformed into those very famous Crimean solonchaks, on which nothing grows. Experts told me that they would make an aqueduct: that is, like the Kerch bridge, only water would flow from above. Where will you get water from? They say from Kuban. But the Don is getting shallow, so the South of Russia can be dehydrated.
Yuri Medovar notes that under such conditions, desalination of sea water becomes a realistic option.
- Israel has the highest technology in this area - they desalinate water from the Mediterranean Sea almost to drinking water. Mineralization and salinity - less than one gram per liter. We don’t have such a desalination plant, and for this we need a large amount of electricity, with which Crimea also has a problem. Wherever you throw - everywhere a wedge. It turns out that the only way out is to give water from the Dnieper, but the North Crimean Canal is dry, it is collapsing. You can allocate not 19, but 190 billion, but if there is no water, where can you get it from?
Deputy Director of the Institute of Water Problems and Land Reclamation, former First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian State Agency for Water Resources Mikhail Yatsyuk draws attention to another aspect of the Russian program, but also gives negative forecasts.
Money, most likely, is allocated for the search for sources and engineering solutions for the accumulation of wastewater. But this will not only lead to soil degradation, but will also hit the environment.
- In the central part of Crimea there is not enough water to meet all needs. I carefully read the documents - there is more sense in the additional accumulation of wastewater in the central part, where it is possible to build additional reservoirs or reservoirs in order to then transfer water to the East of Crimea. This money, most likely, is allocated for the search for additional sources and engineering solutions for the accumulation of wastewater. But again, this will not only lead to soil degradation, but will also affect the environment. Each river or catchment area has a resource that can be withdrawn, and this will not lead to negative consequences. If it is completely accumulated, this will lead to serious violations of the ecological situation in the river basins.
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