DISINFO: Ukraine has been barbarically plundering Crimea for 23 years
SUMMARY
Ukraine did not invest anything in these lands. For twenty-three long years there was a deliberate barbaric plunder of the USSR heritage and the systematic destruction of the region.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative on Crimea. In 2014 before the annexation by Russia, the Minister of Finance of Ukraine Oleksandr Shlapak announced:
“Crimea was and remains a subsidised region. In 2013, Crimea was able to provide its financial needs by 51.2%. Crimean taxpayers paid 8.5 billion UAH to budgets of all levels. At the same time, 16.6 billion UAH were received from the budget. The subsidy to the Pension Fund of Crimea amounted to 3.4 billion UAH.”
The Crimean budget, just like the local budgets of the southeastern regions of Ukraine, is traditionally subsidised, that is, it usually received more from the state treasury than it gave. Crimean economist Yuri Smelyansky in an interview with BBC Ukraine noted that before the illegal annexation by Russia, Crimea was financed in Ukraine in much the same way as other regions. “No matter how hard it was, in the conditions of the permanent economic crisis in which Ukraine has been living for 23 years, roads were being built in Crimea, small and medium-sized businesses, which are now dying, were actively developing, the economy was recovering, although not in the way I wanted it to,” said Yuri Smelyansky.