“Please be understanding and patient” — this is the call from the occupiers that now opens every announcement regarding power and water outages in Crimea. Crimeans say their patience is running out. For the third week in a row, people have been asking that if gasoline sales are restricted, they at least be allowed in the evening, since many have to choose between standing in line and going to work. There has been no response to these requests — just the same 20 liters at the height of the workday. People have to spend hours in line. In the heat, without air conditioning — after all, every drop of gasoline is worth its weight in gold. And sometimes even in the stench — because not all gas stations open their restrooms to customers.

“My husband and I — and he’s recovering from a massive heart attack — stood in line for six hours. And they wouldn’t even let us use the restroom. And when I expressed my dissatisfaction to the employees, they told me, ‘That’s it, there’s no gas left — it’s all gone.’ I said, ‘How can that be? The tanker just arrived.’ And they replied, ‘Ha-ha-ha, it arrived, siphoned off the gas, and drove away,’” the Crimean woman wrote indignantly on social media. At the same time, the woman is afraid to reveal not only her own name but even the name of the gas station where she was mistreated — the line between “spreading panic” and “discrediting the Russian army” has now almost disappeared.

Another sore spot is the quality of the fuel. 95-octane gasoline rarely makes it onto the open market. People have to settle for 92-octane. Cars don’t like it.

“My old Mazda sputters, but it runs. But my neighbor’s new Subaru broke down — the engine seized up, and that was it, we were stranded. Even 95-octane gas didn’t always work for him; he used to fill up with 98-octane. And now he has to walk,” says Muslim from Yevpatoria.

“Even the rich are crying” — these days in Crimea, this saying is heard more often than ever. After all, a retiree and a successful businessman have an equal chance of being left without water or electricity. And even those who used to deny themselves almost nothing have started counting their money.

“If you’d asked me six months ago how much bread, milk, or meat cost, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. If I needed something, I’d buy it without looking at the price tags. But now I do look, and I’m keeping track of the price trends. What can I say — the trends are bad. Everything has gone up by about 30 percent. My deputy’s relatives in the village slaughtered two cows, so we bought half the meat at the office. 750 rubles per kilo. But what can you do? In the store, it’s a thousand,” complains Ruslan, the head of a department at a large company.

Prices for meat and dairy products are rising for perfectly good reasons. After a few days without electricity and in 30-degree heat — which is exactly how life is right now in Armyansk, Dzhankoy, and Krasnoperekopsk — any sausage, sour cream, or cheese spoils in the stores. That’s exactly what happened at a small shop owned by Olena from Stary Krym.

“I mainly had farm-fresh products — chicken, homemade cheese, and cream. I don’t have the money for a generator, and where would I even get fuel for it? I was hoping the refrigerator would hold out for a few hours. If only I’d known there wouldn’t be any power for two days, I would have just given everything away to people. Instead, I threw 100,000 rubles in the trash. A month’s worth of profit,” the woman says, on the verge of tears.

The main topic of conversation among colleagues and neighbors these days is how much of what everyone has stocked up for the winter. Crimean women have always preserved a lot of vegetables and fruits. But that was more of a tribute to tradition. Now it’s a matter of urgent necessity. In addition to jars of pickled cucumbers and strawberry jam, the pantries and basements are filled with bags of flour, sugar, and grains. Because no one knows how much longer they’ll have to “be patient and understanding.”