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NY Times, Oct. 1 2017
In Crimea, Russian Land Grab Feeds Cries of ‘Carpetbaggers!’
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
SEVASTOPOL, Crimea — More than three years after Russia snatched Crimea
from Ukraine, the peninsula is suffering through an extended season of
discontent.
Shady, Kremlin-appointed bureaucrats are proving to be just as corrupt
and inept as their Ukrainian predecessors. International sanctions,
shrugged off in the heady days after the Russian annexation, have jacked
up food prices while endlessly complicating ordinary aspects of life,
like banking and travel.
Perhaps most galling to Crimeans, the government is hauling thousands of
residents into court to confiscate small land holdings distributed free
as a campaign ploy in 2010 when Ukraine controlled the Black Sea peninsula.
Residents of Sevastopol, famous as a historic battleground and home to
the Black Sea fleet, were among the most vocal, militant supporters of
Russia when it annexed Crimea.
That was then.
“I supported reunification because I thought that with Russia’s arrival
things would improve,” said Lenur A. Usmanov, a rare outspoken Kremlin
partisan from the Tatar minority who has since become a serial
protester. “But there is no change.”
Yevgeny V. Dzhemal, an activist lawyer fighting the mass land
expropriation, put it even more succinctly: “They were bastards under
Ukraine, too. Nothing has changed.”
The United Nations issued a report this week accusing Russian security
agencies of committing “grave” human rights abuses since the annexation.
Many of those abuses occurred right after the annexation against those
who resisted the takeover. Russia dismissed the report as “absurd”
inventions spread by its opponents.
Locals largely focus on different complaints. They invariably denigrate
the new bureaucrats as carpetbaggers, using the word “varyagi” in
Russian, an old word for Viking outsiders, especially when it comes to
land confiscation.
The city of Sevastopol claims that it must repossess at least 10,000
plots to help create a rational development plan. The owners howl that
the “mass land grab” will benefit crooked developers and senior
officials who covet what when stitched together amounts to sprawling
tracts of choice seaside property.
“Nobody thought it would be as bad, with issues emerging suddenly like
the land plots,” said Roman Kiyashko, the burly Communist Party
candidate for governor whose campaign slogan, “Your man from
Sevastopol,” emphasized his native roots. “Russian officials act like an
elephant in a china shop. They just implement their policies with no
feedback.”
Yet many natives stress that their grievances have not reached the point
of reconsidering the internationally criticized 2014 referendum in which
they voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia. “Stones can fall from the
sky as long as we live in our Motherland,” said Oleg Nikolaev, a
successful restaurateur, quoting a Russian expression.
Taking back Crimea by force in 2014 was celebrated across Russia as a
long-overdue restoration of lost superpower might. It made President
Vladimir V. Putin wildly popular, something the Kremlin clearly hoped to
capitalize on when it scheduled the upcoming presidential election for
March 18, the fourth anniversary of the formal annexation of Crimea.
For many, however, the euphoria around that date has gone as flat as old
champagne.
In Sevastopol, the main target of local ire is Dmitri Ovsyannikov, 40,
one of a new, nationwide generation of young governors. Appointed acting
governor by Mr. Putin last year, he has alienated many Sevastopolians by
filling virtually every administrative post with fellow Moscow imports.
Even some local officials who support Mr. Putin wonder privately why the
president picked someone so aloof.
Mr. Ovsyannikov managed to win a rare election to his post earlier this
month. But analysts attributed that to a dismal turnout of just under 33
percent and the fact that Mr. Putin campaigned for him.
Mr. Putin enjoys cultlike status for both taking back Crimea and for
promising to rescue the Black Sea fleet that anchors in Sevastopol from
rust bucket oblivion. “I remember at some point in the middle of 2000s I
came here for the first time and I almost wept because Sevastopol — a
special city for every Russian — was in a terrible state,” Mr. Putin
said during one recent visit.
Some Sevastopolians are doing the weeping now, convinced that Mr. Putin
should rescue them anew.
“Putin does not know what these rascals are doing — they want to seize
all our land!” cried one man at a small, illegal protest in early
September on Nakhimov Square, the heart of a city that hugs a series of
spectacular inlets.
Sevastopol has a long history of fractious politics and quirky
demonstrations, but recently strife escalated markedly, said Volodymyr
P. Kazarin, a university rector and former vice governor who opposed
annexation and has since moved to Kiev. “Sevastopol is once again among
the most rebellious cities in Crimea,” he said.
After the annexation, Crimea was divided into two districts, with the
larger Sevastopol metropolitan area designated a Federal city while the
rest of the peninsula became the Crimean Republic, a Russian province
with extra autonomy. Resentments similar to those in Sevastopol have
erupted in the republic as well.
For example, the government in Simferopol, the capital, imported a
Moscow architect to supervise a master regional development plan. One of
her first proposals included revamping the central Lenin Square by
removing the Lenin statue. Simferopol removed her instead.
“Crimea did not like this idea of destroying monuments,” said Aleksandr
A. Formanchuk, a veteran local government official.
In Yalta, one land confiscation ended in tragedy after the longtime
owner of a beachfront cafe discovered that it had been demolished and
the cafe contract awarded to a different, anonymous developer. He
committed suicide by setting himself on fire in a city park last September.
Oligarchs and other wealthy businessmen, mostly Ukrainian, lost billions
of dollars in properties expropriated after annexation. But the land
fight in Sevastopol seems to affect mostly ordinary people like retired
teachers and navy veterans.
The city has filed 3,800 lawsuits so far, with more expected, some
possibly even involving long abandoned Soviet military property.
“Representatives of the government agencies just laugh at us,” said
Lubov Zvonik, 60, a retired store manager. “They have an unspeakable
attitude toward us, because there are orders from the top to get our land.”
Sevastopol was once a center of the nation’s defense industries. But
after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union the plants all closed, and
land remains the only significant resource left to the city, said Mr.
Nikolaev, the restaurateur, who also leads an official effort to attract
new investors.
Some of the confiscated land “will be offered as tenders that investors
can bid for, some will be preserved in protected areas,” he said, noting
that Ukrainian developers often bent the rules through bribery and other
means, leading to “barbarian construction” that still scars the city.
While the land confiscation is the hot-button issue currently, residents
of Sevastopol tick off a long list of grievances.
They say government jobs have become a license to steal or extort, with
wave after wave of officials across Crimea dismissed for corruption or
incompetence, even more than under Ukraine. Russia is pouring money onto
the peninsula — $650 million last year — and the scale of corruption has
expanded accordingly, experts said.
Sanctions are another constant source of irritation, leading to higher
food prices and complications in banking, agriculture, transportation
and securing visas to travel abroad. Fearful of international
repercussions, no major Russian supermarket chain, bank or other
business has set up shop since the annexation.
Most goods have to be imported on the unreliable ferry, driving up
prices at least until the end of 2018, when a spectacular bridge to
Russia is due to be completed. A Russian federal agency recently accused
gasoline importers of colluding to keep prices high.
Because of Sevastapol’s military history, its residents have long prided
themselves in being a little more Russian than the rest of the country.
Perhaps Leo Tolstoy best captured that mood in “Sevastopol Sketches,”
when he reflected on his experiences as a young officer during the
1853-1856 Crimean War.
“At the thought that you too are in Sevastopol, a certain feeling of
manliness, of pride,” penetrates your soul, he wrote, and your blood
begins “to flow more swiftly through your veins.”
Hence some find it infuriating that outside officials have begun
tampering with history in a city where nearly every major square or
avenue is named for a battle or military hero.
The Kremlin recently adopted the proposal by a group of expatriate
nobles to erect a monument to reconciliation in the city, given that
Crimea is where the Russian aristocracy and its White Army made their
last stand after the 1917 revolution.
It garnered some local support. Yet many grumble that a city of 418,000
people — including numerous descendants of Red Army soldiers — and 2,000
monuments does not need another one.
“This is a hero city, a city of warriors, and a warrior is not supposed
to reconcile,” barked Mr. Kiyashko, the local Communist leader, sitting
in the party headquarters decorated with giant portraits of Lenin.
The economic ills and constant meddling by Moscow make even senior
government officials acknowledge widespread disillusionment reminiscent
of Ukrainian days. The Kremlin was too quick to treat Crimea like the
rest of the country despite its long, traumatic history, said Mr.
Formanchuk, the longtime local official.
“Many Crimeans are unhappy that the Russian Federal center is also
trying to do the same thing — to grind everything up and say you are
like everyone else,” he said. “We suffered on our own, and what are you
doing telling us how to live?”
You can follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter @NeilMacFarquhar
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