[ July 2013 ] In the southen part of Crimea on the sea, they were building high rise apartments one after another, which was damaging the view.
They are for Ukrainian or Russian rich people’s second houses and one apartment costs around half a million dollars according to Sevlana, the guide.
The ordinary flats cost about the 10th, but they are still too expensive for most of them.
On top of that, there are old flats which were build in the era of Khrushchev (late 1950s to early 60s) with the plan to rebuild them in 30 years, but they are still there as they were and the condition is very bad, which is an issue now.
Svetlana repeated that since 1991 their life has become tougher.
When they became independent, small number of people moved quickly and sharply and became extraordinarily rich, but the rest became poorer.
Now it is a normal practice that when people want to do something, they have to pay the official tax and the money under the table.
She said ” the cost of living is about half of Western European, but our salary is 10th of the Western standard”.
As we learned at school, Ukraine has got the fertile soil and they produce a lot of wheat.
The government buy them out, but a part is sold to Turkey.
Turkish people make flour out of it and sell it back to Ukraine expensively.
She said ” this is the way to make the port owners rich”.
