SARI-BASH, Crimea – The village of Sari-Bash, in Pervomaysk region, is a long way from Crimean tourist brochure images of lush mountains, white palaces and blue seas. Its identical Soviet-era houses sit amid endless hectares of flat, dry, wind-blown steppe. You can see for miles, but there is not much there except cows, sheep, thistles and vast swathes of scarlet poppies.
This is the landscape of northern Crimea, unvisited by most tourists, but as vital as tourism to the peninsula. Normally the poppies would be jostling for space with grain, vegetable and fruit crops which both supply Crimean markets and provide a living for over 80 percent of this steppe region’s inhabitants. Agriculture accounts for 10 percent of the overall Crimean economy.
This year, Russia’s war against Ukraine, including its March annexation of Crimea, has left fields dry and empty, and local people praying for water.
“We are in a hopeless situation,” said Refat Saidablyayev, deputy head of the Pervomaysk Regional Administration and owner of seven bare hectares and sacks of unplanted seed potatoes. “People don’t know what to do. They have seed material but they can’t risk planting because what if there’s no water tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow? Everything will dry out, and they will lose their entire crop.”
Saidablyayev’s potatoes, like everyone’s crops in Pervomaysk, rely on the North Crimea canal. This Soviet engineering project of the 1960s-70s delivers 1.8 billion cubic meters of water annually from the Dnipro River in Ukraine to Crimea, providing over 80 percent of the peninsula’s water.
Usually the canal sluices are opened in March, in time for spring sowing. This year, following Russia’s occupation of Crimea in March, and a Russian law incorporating this Ukrainian territory into the Russian Federation, Ukraine instead reduced the flow to the lowest possible volume of just seven cubic meters per second. Crimea has few water sources of its own, particularly in the north and southeast. Farms throughout these regions are now completely deprived of water for irrigation.
The Ukrainian State Water Resources Agency released a statement on May 8 saying the flow to Crimea had been stopped because of “the absence of constructive proposals to establish contractual relations for providing the Autonomous Republic of Crimea with water resources for domestic water supply and irrigation.” There is also the matter of an unpaid debt of 1.7 million hryvnias for Crimean water consumption in 2013.
Meanwhile head of the Crimean government Sergei Aksyonov told CrimeaInform that the canal closure was an “act of sabotage” and “nothing but a deliberate action against Crimeans.” Both sides claim to be open to reaching an agreement over restarting the flow – but so far, the sluices remain closed.
For farmers like Reshad Kokey from Sari-Bash, any agreement is as far off and unpredictable as rain clouds in this dry region. Last year, Kokey and his three sons invested in new farming technology and bought expensive Dutch carrot seed to plant, planning to sell several tons of produce to Ukraine. The first planting season in April has already come and gone, and their fields are empty. Now all they can do is hope that water will appear in time for the next season, by July 7.
“It’s a catastrophe,” Kokey said. “If this carries on until autumn, it will be really terrible for everyone.” His only consolation is that at least he did not plant the first crop of carrots, and so still has the seed. Onion farmers, who plant earlier, were not so lucky and lost their entire crop when the water supply dried up.
Russian Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov has said that the water shortage will affect 120,000 hectares of Crimean farmland, including vineyards and rice crops, costing farmers up to five billion rubles ($140 million). It is a far cry from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement in early April that Russia’s first priority would be to modernize the agricultural sector in Crimea and provide farmers with seed, fuel and equipment.
Kokey, a Crimean Tatar, moved to Sari-Bash from Uzbekistan in 1987, as part of a Soviet resettlement program. Crimean Tatars were not allowed to settle near the Crimean coast, but could go to the northern steppe regions which Russians and Ukrainians were leaving due to difficult living conditions.
When Kokey arrived, there was irrigation water for the collective farm’s 2000 hectares, but no drinking water. Many of the new settlers left again as soon as they could. Only after seven years did the isolated village get an artesian well, drilled with support from the UN development program. Villagers built a school in 2003, and opened a kindergarten with the support of Western donors in 2004. Today 1,700 people, mostly Crimean Tatars, make a living from private livestock and crop farming developed after the collective farm collapsed.
“We’ve really tried here,” said Kokey. “We established our businesses, built things up. There’s nothing to do here except agriculture, so we learned how to farm – mostly it was people who had no practice at it before.”
Now, these people who worked so hard are wondering if they will have to leave. Kokey also keeps livestock, so his family is not as badly hit as others in the region, where people whose livelihood relies entirely on agricultural produce, are staring at ruin.
Russian and Crimean officials have proposed a raft of solutions to provide Crimea with its own water supply, including digging hundreds more artesian wells, extending a pipeline from Russia’s Kuban region, and building desalination plants. In the meantime, both Russian and Crimean governments have promised to pay farmers compensation. But Saidablyayev said no one in Pervomaysk has received any compensation so far.
Visits from ministers and from representatives from Moscow region, which has been appointed ‘curator’ of Pervomaysk region, have yielded assurances that the Ukraine-Russia stand-off will be resolved on a higher level, he said. Moscow region has sent humanitarian aid and medical equipment, and is building a kindergarten and repaving the central street of the regional center.
“But for our region,” said Saidablyayev, “the biggest problem is water.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The content is independent of these organizations and is solely the responsibility of the Kyiv Post.
