At the end of June, Crimean collaborators decided to “please the population” by saying that “gratuitous receipts to the republican budget in the form of grants, subsidies, subventions and other budget support measures are gradually decreasing.”
We have described this “open secret” many times before: after 2022, the “optimization of federal financing” of the collapsing “Crimean economy” significantly cut the corresponding “budget drip”, now the collaborators have stated that “financial assistance” from the Kremlin in the first quarter of 2025 allegedly amounted to 29.5 billion rubles, which is “almost half less than last year’s level.”
In order to “maintain a balance,” the occupiers stated, that allegedly “tax revenues increased by 20.7% compared to the same period last year, amounting to 19.6 billion rubles”, and “non-tax” amounted to 6.9 billion, which is “more than a quarter higher than last year’s figures”.
The described omissions still allow us to calculate that in total, at least 20-23 billion less entered the “republican budget” in the first quarter than last year.
The occupiers increased the “growth of taxes” due to two factors: many of the aggressor’s military structures on the peninsula are expanding their staff and the amounts of payments, from which the “income tax” is growing; the occupiers are also introducing “new taxes” and increasing the “book value” of property to inflate “tax deductions from it”.
The occupiers also boast of the alleged “increase in tax revenues” from the “Titan Investments” structure, whose scams with the plant in Armyansk, including the establishment of explosives production, we described earlier.
However, as is obvious, these manipulations will not be able to cover the “hole” of 110 billion per year, and “non-tax revenues” in the form of “privatization” and “nationalization” of property give the collaborators a significant corruption profit, but the “budget” is increased literally by fractions of a percent.
Against this background, we will give a remarkable “example” with the announced “privatization” of the Simferopol structure “Universal-Avia” by collaborators. This sanctioned “state unitary enterprise” was declared by the occupiers in 2014 on the basis of the captured Ukrainian state aviation enterprise with the same name, which, among other things, was engaged in the delivery of goods, people, humanitarian aid and patrolling the area as part of servicing UN and OSCE missions in more than 20 countries before the occupation.
Until 2022, the occupiers laundered funds through “Universal-Avia”, which almost immediately fell under sanctions from many countries of the world and operates a group of up to 8 helicopters, for ensuring supplies to the “Chernomornaftogaz” platforms on the Black Sea shelf captured by the aggressor, as well as for “training” and “rescue operations”, including in favor of the Russian army structures.
By 2025, “something had gone completely wrong” with the occupiers at “Universal-Avia”, and previous attempts to organize VIP transfers for Russian “tourists” by helicopter predictably failed to bring in any money. And since May, collaborators, through the “director” of this structure, Mikhail Slashchev from Rostov-on-Don, have been trying to “sell at auction” two MI-8MTV-1 helicopters, but to no avail.
Now, however, the collaborators have “included the entire “Universal-Avia” structure in the projected privatization plan”, but it is obvious that this scam will not create any special “budget revenues”, unlike the personal gain of its initiators, in the sphere of subsequent development by “the right people” of the areas occupied by the “aviators” in Simferopol.
Let us recall that earlier, the occupiers, in the format of similar scams, tried to sell off the pleasure and port fleet, controlled by the illegal structure “Crimean Sea Ports”.
