The head of the board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Eskender Bariiev, in an interview with Hromadske Radio, once again emphasized that it is impossible to supply water from Dnipro river to occupied Crimea, as this is the only tool that might bring the Russian Federation to the negotiations.
“You can’t supply water in exchange for the Donbas or political prisoners. This is the only political instrument through which the Russian Federation will nevertheless keep negotiating in various formats. Russia has always avoided this. The Russian Federation took a number of steps. In 2014, they wanted to take control over the land corridor to access our water, however, our soldiers were able to stop them”,- Bariiev emphasized.
The head of the CTRC explained that the occupants are actively building apartment buildings for immigrants from the Russian Federation and water needs to be available for these houses to function, that is why “if we start supplying water, we will begin to provide the population that was brought into the occupied Crimea.”
According to him, water is also needed for the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation, and this is a priority for Russian President Vladimir Putin, in order to keep running the military bases that Russia is building on the peninsula.
“After the liberation of Crimea, we won’t be able to immediately supply the water from Dnipro river with the current canal due to the fact that in many places the bottom has changed. And according to our ecologists, the water will immediately go into the subsoil spaces, it will raise salts, and can lead to an environmental disaster. We must think over the mechanism itself, how to do it, it will be a difficult process”,- he added.