The Kremlin promises mountains of gold to the temporarily captured areas, but in fact the Moscow elites are competing for the right to use the funds for the “restoration” of the territories as soon as possible.
Moscow propaganda, on the one hand, constantly talks about how “Kyiv militants” are destroying Donbas, and on the other hand, about the improvements that the Russian Federation is bringing to the captured lands. That is, in the world of propaganda, Ukraine stops destroying its cities as soon as Russia “liberates” them.
Maybe because it is Russia that destroys cities and then simply turns on the propaganda about “returning to a peaceful life.” Within the framework of the latter narrative, the Kremlin is now talking about the development of a program of “social and economic development” of the TOT until 2025.
As part of the program, Moscow promises to invest billions of rubles in infrastructure. However, it is worth noting that even the presence of the program does not mean mandatory funding. In fact, these are only plans, the implementation of which may or may not be financed.
It’s no secret that many of the Kremlin’s top brass already have their own plans to spend money on the construction of dummy infrastructure. Why fake? Because the plans envisage building objects not because of profitability or need, but simply to simulate recovery.
An example of such “people’s construction”, which is necessary for the development of funds by the necessary contractors, are the plans for the development of the Mariupol port. Before the war, the port had a cargo turnover of 5.5 million tons, of which 5 million tons accounted for the transportation of metals. However, the Russians destroyed the metallurgy in the city, as well as partially the port itself.
Now Moscow is talking about unprecedented improvement and economic development, namely about plans to restore the port for 1.3 billion rubles. Rosmorrechflot has to finance the “restoration of transportation”, and the head of the government of the occupiers, Mikhail Mishustin, was appointed to be responsible.
Math
The total volume of transported goods in 2022 in the Russian Federation fell by 1.2%. However, according to the German Institute for the World Economy (IFW), the real numbers are much worse. It’s all about the sanctions that the European Union introduced against the Russian Federation after the full-scale invasion.
It was Europe that was the Kremlin’s main trading partner until February 24, 2022. Thus, the institute investigated the movement of ships and came to the conclusion that the largest commercial ports of the Russian Federation in Saint Petersburg and Novorossiysk lost 90% and 50% of their cargo traffic.
At the same time, trade between the EU and the Russian Federation fell by 43%. Since this year, sanctions against Russia’s energy resources have come into effect, which will further reduce trade volumes, and therefore the ports in the Black and Azov Seas will become purely domestic. It goes without saying that the port of Mariupol has no prospect of becoming international due to the occupation.
If you want to know the future of the port of Mariupol, you should look at the ports of Crimea. In 2012, local ports handled 11 million tons of cargo, in 2018 4 million tons, and in 2020 already 862 thousand tons. This is all against 6 million tons of one port of Mariupol, before the “liberation”.
The fact is that officially all the ports of the peninsula are closed by Ukraine. Visiting such ports is a violation of international law and warrants arrest of the vessel. That is, the port of Mariupol as part of the Russian Federation is doomed.
And domestic transportation will not save the port, because as mentioned above, the port is focused on industry, which was destroyed by the Russians. That is, there is nothing to load in the port, except building materials, which the Russians get from the demolition of destroyed buildings in the city.
Conclusion
As a result, we have a typical propaganda story that the occupiers plan to use. Feeding their population with talks about future plans and “national constructions”, in fact, the Russians are trying to develop funds in a controlled region, where after deoccupation all ends will go down the drain.
Russia carries only ruins, death and imitation of revival, because the task of the empire is to plunder and satisfy the needs of the emperor and his entourage, not the improvement of the captured lands.
