MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd July, 2021) Kiev's blockade of fresh water supplies to Crimea violates rights of millions of residents and tourists, the Russian Prosecutor General said in additional materials for its inter-state complaint against Ukraine.
The prosecutor general said that Russia has filed its first ever inter-state complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.
"The systemic administrative practice adopted in April 2014, the so-called "water blockade" of Crimea by Ukraine, is a large-scale violation of rights of 2.5 million permanent residents of Crimea and several million citizens of Russia and other countries, including Ukraine, who visit it on vacation and for medical treatment," the prosecutors said.
The prosecutors described blocking of the North Crimean Canal as "revenge for the expression by hundreds of thousands of residents of their political position."
The prosecutors note that a working group in Crimea's state council estimated the damage to the region's budget from Ukraine's blocking of the North Crimean Canal in May 2014 to be 819.52 billion rubles ($11 billion) - "including 420 billion rubles in the area of public utilities, 104.58 billion rubles in water resources, 277.6 billion rubles in agriculture and fisheries, 17.34 billion rubles in the replenishment of the mineral and raw materials base and forestry" - plus 586.5 billion in damage to the tourism and health resort sector of the region. The total amounts to over $18.7 billion.
