Вибачаюсь, стаття англійською з FT.com
As winter nears, Russia strains to feed and heat Crimea
Kathrin Hille – Crimea
After Eskender, a 33-year-old coal dealer in Pervomaisky, one of Crimea’s remote rural districts, filled the bed of his orange Lada pickup truck on a recent day, what remained in the typically well-stocked yard was a meagre, metre-high mound.
“There is a serious shortage,” he said, noting that prices have more than doubled from a year ago. “I don’t know how people will get through the winter here.”
That possibility could have implications far beyond the tiny villages in the Crimean steppe. One of the great risks of Moscow’s controversial move in March to annex Crimea from Ukraine was whether it would have the wherewithal to feed, heat and power a peninsula it can only reach by sea.
If it fails, some observers fear Moscow could encourage further land-grabs by its separatist allies in eastern Ukraine to open a corridor to its new possession.
“It risks further tempting Russia – itself not able to single-handedly supply Crimea with the basics – to conduct further military incursions to capture a land bridge to the peninsula,” said Taras Berezovets, a Ukrainian political analyst and Crimea native.
Perhaps mindful of this risk, Ukraine has so far continued to supply Crimea with electricity – even though it has warned that its own coal shortages because of fighting with the rebels in the east could soon lead to rationing.
For Crimea’s 2.4m inhabitants, dependence on the mainland is almost total. They rely on Ukraine for 80 per cent of their electricity and water, an estimated two-thirds of food and consumer goods, and virtually all refined oil products and coal.
Crimean authorities insist they can manage with electricity generated by the peninsula’s own gas power plants supplemented by hundreds of diesel generators shipped in from Russia over the summer.
But the risks to coal and food supplies are more urgent. Since the annexation, the freight rail from Ukraine, which brought in virtually everything the peninsula needed, have been cut.
Moscow has grand plans to link Crimea to the Russian mainland by road and rail – a project for which the authorities expect to shell out at least Rbs228bn, nearly $5bn. But construction of either a bridge or tunnel is expected to take at least three years.
So Moscow is for now relying on ferries – a lifeline that will become more tenuous as seas turn rough and icy.
Eskender’s coal was running low because a storm in the Kerch Strait forced a closure of the ferry to mainland Russia for nearly a week. Ships stopped running on the evening of October 23, and service was not fully restored until October 29.
According to the transport administration, a queue of 300 lorries had formed by October 28 in the Russian port of Novorossiysk waiting for the ferry to Crimea, and more than 500 on the other end.
“If bad weather continues for several days, then the ferries will have to stop for three to five days. That is an objective reality with which it is practically impossible to fight,” a transport administration official said.
A new freight service has opened between the sea port of Kerch and Novorossiysk. As tourist ferry traffic over the treacherous, shallow Kerch Strait has dropped off, two new freight lines have been opened between Kerch and Port Kavkaz, on a spit off the Russian coast. A freight shipping link between Novorossiysk and Sevastopol, the port on the western end of Crimea, is also being ramped up.
For local shipping and logistics companies, business is booming. “This port was destined to die, but now it is developing,” says Andrei Shpilevsky, director of TES Terminal which operates out of Kerch. In addition to its traditional transshipment services of fuel oil, liquefied gas and light oil products, the company has also taken on orders to ship food and other products to Crimea.
According to Crimea’s energy ministry, the peninsula has 1.26bn cubic metres of natural gas in its underground storage, nearly enough to meet the expected demand for an entire winter. Some experts contest this calculation.
The bigger problem will be heating the quarter of Crimean households not yet linked to the gas grid. Many are in remote rural areas such as Pervomaisky.
Sergey Egorov, energy minister, says 32,000 tons of coal are needed to bring the government and the public sector through the winter. He claims to have 17,500 tons in storage and another 5,000 tons on the way.
But another 30,000 tons are needed for households, and will not be easy to transport in the winter. “There is drift ice in the Kerch Strait from December, and sometimes the Kerch bay will completely freeze,” says Mr Shpilevsky.
For now, Crimeans are making do. “We get a bit from here and a bit from there,” Eskender says. “Coal is being smuggled in from Ukraine, too.”
