In January, the Sevastopol mouthpiece of the aggressor’s propaganda “ForPost” began to work out a new tragicomic “leadership task”, deciding to talk about “prospects for the development of tourism” in the Russian-occupied areas of mainland Ukraine. This epic trip of consciousness about a territory, where not only a genocide of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians’ massive war crimes present, but also there is no systemic economy, and also such “tourist attraction” exists as a war zone, was best described by a nameless commentator as “give me some money for the skin of an unkilled bear”.
The declared “expert geographers”, former Dnipro resident and now Muscovite Oleg Afanasyev and Olesya Topalova from Melitopol, do not abandon the stated topic. And if the latter’s experience of collaboration with the occupiers began in 2022, then Afanasyev “noted” his public support for the occupation of the Crimea in February 2022, while being an associate professor at Dnipro National University.
It is difficult to say how much sarcasm is contained in Topalova’s statement that in the Russian-occupied part of the Zaporizhzhya Region “new tourist flows to recreational areas are now being formed, alternative types of tourism are being transformed” with a “target audience” from the “Rostov region and North Ossetia”. However, she was clearly surpassed by Afanasyev, who said that among the “new tourist regions” there are “key points”, namely such as Lugansk and Horlovka.
It is characteristic that among Afanasyev’s science-like opuses of recent years there are a couple dedicated to the “role of tourist legends” in “forming the attractive properties of destinations”, however, to fulfill the current criminal tasks, neither the “experts” nor the “journalists” clearly lack the imagination for the appropriate legends.
