At the beginning of 2025, the occupiers-controlled structures by decided to rather timidly admit the obvious fact of global warming in relation to Crimea.
First, the so-called “head of the Hydrometeorological Center” of the occupiers in Crimea, Tatyana Lyubetskaya, admitted that in 2024 the average annual air temperature on the peninsula was 14.5 degrees Celsius, and this was 2.6 degrees above the climatic norm, and therefore 2024 turned out to be the hottest in the history of observations.
As we have already written on this subject, despite the hackneyed Kremlin mantra that global warming, obvious to everyone, is “useful” for the aggressor-controlled territories, Lyubetskaya was forced to state that, against the backdrop of elevated temperatures in Crimea, there was a shortage of precipitation, up to 70% of the norm, despite the fact that the year itself was not dry.
And the other day, the “media” of the aggressor disseminated a statement by a member of the Russia’s Public Chamber, ecologist Vladimir Lifantyev, that “according to some of the assumptions of mathematical analysis, by 2100 the territory of Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory may become desertified precisely because of climate change.”
These revelations are not news for experts, since climate change modeling for Europe was conducted earlier, and according to its parameters, the Crimean peninsula will indeed turn into the most arid zone by 2100, which will make not only grain farming or livestock farming, but also, for example, gardening and viticulture on most of the peninsula extremely risky.
It is not surprising that the aggressor’s central propaganda decided to “refute” this “optimism” by disseminating statements from the Moscow “Agency for Strategic Initiatives” about the alleged “prematureness” of such forecasts, which allegedly “do not take into account the measures taken to adapt to climate change”.
It was stated that “in drought conditions, it is supposed to introduce modern technologies for plowing the land and modernize irrigation systems, use modern methods of irrigation and water accumulation, and also support entrepreneurs engaged in breeding … aquaculture”.
The “Agency” also stated that desertification would not occur, since “a state program for agricultural development is in effect” in occupied Crimea and “in 2023, 672.43 hectares of reclaimed land were put into operation in the region.”
At the very least, it is obvious that the “Agency” is confusing cause and effect, since “support for entrepreneurs”, even if it had not turned from the current banal money laundering into something else, would not affect the climate in any way.
Well, the data on land reclamation were given taking into account the short-term supply of water to the peninsula via the North Crimean Canal, which ceased after the Russian military blew up the Kakhovka HPP dam.
The propagandists themselves quote the words of Moscow professor Nikolai Khitrov from the Dokuchaev Soil Institute, that in the absence of water in the canal, with the current “skillful melioration” from the occupiers “the poorly controlled extraction of underground water for irrigation will continue, which will lead to a progressive increase in the mineralization of groundwater.”
Note that the “source” of these tragicomic “refutations”, the aforementioned “Agency”, is not a scientific or agricultural structure of the aggressor, it was previously created by the government of the aggressor for “researching the market situation and studying public opinion”, that is, specifically for brainwashing the population.
It is noteworthy that at the end of 2014, the “Agency” pompously opened its own illegal “representative office” on the occupied peninsula, where Sevastopol collaborator Elena Bazhenova was noted as a “talking head”, however, back in 2019, the “Agency’s” activities on the peninsula were curtailed.
In fact, the desertification of Crimea is a direct consequence of both the global warming provoked by the Kremlin and the thoughtless economic activities of the occupiers, which our Association has repeatedly informed the relevant UN structures and reported at the events of the UN Climate Change Conferences in 2022-2024.
