Kiev's Christmas gift: Ukraine pledges to sabotage Russian efforts to avert humanitarian crisis amid water shortages in Crimea

Jonny Tickle
RT
Fri, 25 Dec 2020 19:48 UTC

© Sputnik / Konstantin Mihalchevskiy

A view shows Ayanskoe reservoir in Crimea, Russia.

Russian officials have hit back at Ukraine after Kiev revealed plans to hinder Crimea's attempts to avert a humanitarian crisis due to a lack of water. Many local residents have been affected by restrictions.

In many parts of the peninsula, water is issuing from taps for only six hours a day. Crimea has experienced water shortages since 2014, when the Ukrainian government built a dam on a canal that had previously provided around 85 percent of the area's water. The canal was constructed by Moscow, when Russia and Ukraine were both part of a union state.

Since the blockade, Russia has repeatedly accused Kiev of human rights violations. However, Western nations have remained remarkably silent on the matter, as have non-governmental organizations concerned with human rights.

© Berihert/Wikipedia

After the Russian annexation of Crimea during the 2014 Crimean crisis, Ukrainian authorities greatly cut the volume of water flowing into Crimea via the canal, citing a huge outstanding debt on water supplies owed by the peninsula. When the Russian government offered to pay the debt, the Ukrainian government refused. This caused the peninsula's agricultural harvest which is heavily dependent on irrigation to fail in 2014.

In order to tackle the water shortage, the Crimean authorities have committed to building a desalination plant from next month, with the possibility of constructing more in the future. On Thursday, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmitry Kuleba revealed Kiev would step in to prevent Russia from alleviating the problem.

"In Crimea, they said that they are trying to attract a large international company to implement desalination technology," Kuleba said. "[After the announcement] we immediately started work ... and we will prevent it from implementing this project."

In response, Ukraine has been lambasted by Russian officials, with State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin accusing Kiev of hating Crimeans.

"Ukraine has always shown such an attitude towards people in Crimea," Volodin said. "Having previously cut off freshwater access through the canal, they now want to make efforts to deprive people of water altogether. Of course, they will not succeed."

Volodin was backed by MP Mikhail Sheremet, who assured that "no one can prevent Russia from implementing this large-scale and vital project."

Yuri Gempel, a local Crimean politician, attacked the Kiev authorities as "vicious and vindictive."

"Prevent, blow up, block - every day, the political elite of Ukraine fiercely demonstrate more and more their evil, destructive nature," he said.

Crimea's water shortage is reaching a critical point, with the shallowing of reservoirs meaning that many parts of the peninsula have restricted water to just a few hours each day.

Comment: Crimea has been forced to take steps to deal with the crisis:

Authorities in Yalta will begin restricting water use to just mornings and evenings, with the peninsula's supply at critically low levels due to light rains and Kiev's blockage of a canal to the disputed territory.

Crimea has experienced water shortages since 2014, when the Ukrainian government cut off freshwater supply from the Dnieper River, following Russia's reabsorption of the peninsula.

Kiev built a dam on the North Crimean Canal, which had previously provided the vast majority of the peninsula's water. The canal was built by the Soviet Union when Russia and Ukraine were both parts of the same union state. Moscow has called the blockage a "violation of all conceivable conventions."

On October 13, the local authorities declared high alert after calculating that the region only has enough water to supply Crimea's largest city, Sevastopol, for 81 days.

The measure to limit Yalta residents to just six hours of water comes after an order from Crimean head Sergey Aksenov, who told local authorities that they must regularly publish information about water reserves. Citizens will now be limited to three hours of water in the morning and three hours in the evening.

"You have a difficult situation. The water supply system of Yalta is different from other regions of the Republic of Crimea," Aksenov explained. "People should understand that these three hours will be enforced, one hundred percent."

The regional head also noted that local authorities received 1,268 water-related complaints in the last week, including citizens reporting that upper floors of buildings were receiving no supply.

Yalta is just the latest Crimean city to receive the bad news about water restrictions, with limits already being imposed in Simferopol, the peninsula's second-largest city. In Yevpatoria, another resort town, residents have already been told that they will not have hot water until the end of the year.

In October, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin revealed that the federal government would spend five billion rubles ($64.5 million) to fix water supply issues.