On Tuesday, Crimeans woke up to a fairy tale. Just as Gauleiter Aksyonov had promised the day before, the price of AI-92 gasoline dropped by half, to 100 rubles per liter. Citizens who had stocked up were disappointed: some had filled canisters for 200 rubles, and others for as much as 400 rubles. But their disappointment was short-lived. By noon, the number “100” on gas station price tags had been replaced by zeros: the discounted 92-octane gasoline had disappeared from the market. Now, residents of the peninsula are anxiously awaiting mid-August — the date Aksyonov announced a price reduction for 95-octane gasoline and diesel fuel.

Prices for fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, have fallen in a relatively natural way. At the height of the season, farmers have to sell their harvest quickly. It’s impossible to store tomatoes or peaches without electricity. And transporting them to Russia is expensive. Meanwhile, prices for dairy products have risen by 50 percent in just one week, and now they cost several times more than in the wealthiest European countries. 

“I bought milk at the supermarket yesterday for 190 rubles. I asked my sister (who lives in Germany): ‘Lyuda, how much is milk over there?’ ‘Something under a euro,’ she said. Less than one euro! But here it’s more than two!  Our milk, from Dzhankoy. So it’s not ‘expensive logistics,’ as they like to say. It’s something else,” says Inna, a nurse from Aqmescit (Simferopol), making no secret of her irritation.

The few Russian vacationers there are also shocked by food prices. Meat and dairy products in Crimea are currently one and a half to two times more expensive than in Moscow.

“At a run-down rural grocery store — which probably hasn’t been renovated since Soviet times — prices are higher than at our ‘Azbuka Vkusa’ (a chain of premium-segment Russian supermarkets — Ed.). I won’t even mention freshness or selection. We don’t eat at restaurants because they’re even more expensive, and you can’t verify the freshness at all. We don’t know if their refrigerator is connected to a generator or if that chicken was sunbathing before they threw it on the grill,” complains Tatyana from the Moscow region, who is vacationing at Cape Meganom.

The tradition among Russian tourists of relaxing with a glass — or better yet, a bottle — of alcohol also comes at a high cost. All imported alcohol in Crimea costs at least 60 percent more than “across the bridge.” Russian beer costs at least a third more. And even Crimean wines are often cheaper in Tver than in Yalta.

“I had a whiskey connoisseur from Ryazan staying here. He’d complain every day: ‘How can it be that this whiskey costs 1,500 over there, but almost 3,000 here?’ To be honest, the high price didn’t stop him at all. He drank every day, out on the balcony. I don’t know if he made it to the sea in a week or not,” laughs Mustafa, the owner of a mini-hotel in Kezlev (Yevpatoria).

Crimeans are outraged by food prices, but are glad that food is available. Above all, they fear that the occupying authorities will follow up on the gasoline price cuts by lowering food prices as well.