auslander Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:48 am
PapaDragon wrote:
Food Blockade to Crimea Likely to Cause More Harm to Ukraine Than Peninsula
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150911/1026885381.html#ixzz3lSgw52JM
Some product does come from 404 but it is not much. Last early summer magazines and kiosks all over the peninsula and Sevastopol pulled 404 food products, both fresh and preserved, from shelves over a two week period, reason being the products did not meet the new food safety and testing laws put in to affect. Gone are the days when the food and health inspectors could be bought off. This has had an affect on magazines and kiosks to an extent although one still should be careful of what and where to buy foodstuffs.
404 has repeatedly imposed various product and services blockades in the last 18 months. Nothing happens, nothing changes. The only event that affected Krim was blocking the water canal from the Dniepr. This canal was built originally to control the spring and early summer floods of the river from melt and runoff. The rice farms were out of business, these in north Krim, last summer. I do not know if they have resumed operations with the now adequate water supplies from aquifers.
Bottom line is there is no shortage of anything in Krim. With over 5 million tourists this summer, meaning 5 million extra mouths to feed, house and supply and that does not include the over 100,000 extra guests from up north living down here for the duration, we never saw a single shelf in any kiosk or magazine that was not full, product did not matter. Even our one large food emporium on northside reopened this past spring after being closed for a year. Used to be owned by the Witch of the North in Kiev, don't know who owns it now, but it's spotless inside today. When they opened it was a bit of pleasure for us to see most of the original workers employed by the new owners. The same thing happened with our local bank office. Raifessen closed ops in Krim in spring of last year, reason being that in RF that bank is for commercial customers, not private. All accounts were honored, no one lost a kopek, and a week later another, Russian, bank opened in the same office using all the employees from the original bank.
Life ain't perfect down here but it's livable, no doubt.