Two members of the Russian government of Crimea were sentenced to a suspended sentence for corruption during the construction of the water supply

Two former members of the Russian government of the annexed Crimea were sentenced to suspended terms for corruption during the construction of a water pipeline to supply Simferopol with fresh water. Until 2022, the peninsula experienced a shortage of drinking water due to the blockade of the North Crimean Canal by Kyiv.

As “Kommersant” reports, the Russian court in Simferopol handed down a verdict in the case of fraud with budget funds against the former Russian Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea Evgeny Kabanov and the former head of the Ministry of Construction Mikhail Khramov.

Kabanov received four years of probation with a fine of 200,000 rubles, Khramov received three years of probation with a fine of 150,000 rubles. Another accused in the case, the director of the contracting organization, Roman Zhuravlyov, was sentenced to a real term of three years.

The officials and the contractor were accused of embezzling from the budget 57.5 million rubles allocated for the construction of a water pipeline from the Ivanovo water intake to the Mezhgorny hydroelectric junction. The total value of the contract was 164 million. According to the idea of ​​the Russian authorities of Crimea, the water intake should provide a third of Simferopol’s fresh water needs, Krym.Realii reported.

After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the authorities of Ukraine closed the Severo-Krymsky canal, which supplies fresh water to the peninsula. This led to an acute shortage of water for drinking and agriculture. The authorities of Ukraine have declared that they will not open the North Crimean Canal while the peninsula is under Russian control. Seizing the canal and opening water to the peninsula became one of the first steps taken by the Russian authorities during a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Now the channel is again under threat of shallowing. This happened due to the breakthrough of the Kakhovskaya HPP dam on the Dnieper located near the beginning of the channel. Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for the disaster. The Ukrainian authorities state that until the dam is rebuilt, the operation of the North Crimean Canal will be technically impossible.