The logistics and energy crisis on the occupied peninsula is giving rise to certain tragicomic episodes, situations that are rather embarrassing for the aggressor’s propaganda machine.
Among others, Roberto Lelli, once an “icon” for Russian media, is now being forced to wind down his business in Yalta and Sevastopol, which produced “ice cream made by hand using Italian methods and proprietary recipes.”
Lelli moved to Sevastopol in 2009 after marrying a local woman; following the events of 2014, he actively promoted the occupiers’ narrative of a “flourishing Crimea immune to sanctions” and a “dying Europe.”
In 2018, Russian intelligence even established the so-called “Belpaese Italian National-Cultural Society of Sevastopol” specifically for Lelli, though within a couple of years, even the occupation “press” stopped writing about this phantom organization.
Later, Lelli gained notoriety for his stories about “Russian doctors saving Italy from the coronavirus” and for his participation in Sergei Debizhev’s utterly kitschy “masterpiece” “Crimea: Terra Incognita”, a film that saw the Italian embark on a tour of military units and schools across the Russian heartland.
Yet now, for some reason, Lelli no longer tells those “journalists” about “Italy’s demise within the European Union”; instead, he laments that “his production line is on the verge of a complete shutdown due to the energy crisis, rising costs, and the lack of a tourist season.”
The most ironic part is that Lelli is now complaining: while the occupiers “needed him for television appearances, he always agreed,” yet “today I’ve been left all alone,” and his handlers from Russian intelligence are clearly in no rush to save his business.
Meanwhile, Lelli had reportedly paid upfront to rent a retail space in Massandra, which now sits empty, and lost a refrigeration unit to a power surge; yet, against this backdrop, the extortionate fees demanded of the ice cream vendor by the “prosecutor’s office” and “Rospotrebnadzor” have remained unchanged, unlike the price of gasoline.
Clearly, other Crimean business owners, who lack the “special merits” in the eyes of the occupiers that Lelli possesses, find themselves in similar straits; though the occupation “press” certainly won’t be writing about their woes.
