Crimea doesn’t have enough consumer goods, Aksyonov says
22 June 2015
The Crimean peninsula can’t supply itself with the necessary amount of goods it needs, the self-declared Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov told an economic forum in St. Petersburg, reported the epravda.com.ua news site on June 21. Crimea is getting its construction materials and food from Russia but isn’t receiving imports from almost anywhere given that its rail and sea access are closed, he said. Local dairy and bread producers are only able to fulfill half the peninsula’s needs, he said. Half of dairy products arrive from Russia.
Zenon Zawada: There is much conflicting information about whether the Crimean government is able to satisfy the demand for consumer goods of its residents, and where the goods are coming from. The deputy industrial policy minister, Konstantin Ravich, claimed in mid-June that 80 percent of the peninsula’s goods come from Russia. We find that hard to believe considering that Crimea’s transportation corridors to Russia are extremely limited (to air and sea). We believe there’s a great deal of imports coming from Ukraine, much of it contraband, which is why the talk of Russia creating a land corridor to Crimea, along the Azov Sea coastline, has died down.
Yet Aksyonov’s statement indicates to us that the Russian leadership still has the land corridor card in its deck and an attempt to create it should remain a concern. And we believe the Russian government can play this card whenever it thinks it will be necessary, whether as a threat or a legitimate need to supply Crimea with goods. This could become necessary if the Ukrainian government decides, or is forced, to halt the flow of contraband into Crimea. The Ukrainian public, for instance, is becoming increasingly fed up with a war in which trade is still flowing between the occupied and free territories. Yet the status of this trade as contraband only makes the goods more expensive and benefits only small groups of intermediaries with government cover, at the expense of the general public. This can’t continue for long.
