Russian bank financially colonizes occupied Crimea

Russia's Sberbank has officially announced significant investments in the temporarily occupied Crimea and Sevastopol. According to the bank's press service, 2.3 billion rubles will be allocated for the "development" of the agro-industrial complex (AIC) of these territories, which is equivalent to almost 1.2 billion hryvnias.

This was reported by Holos Kryma.

This funding is divided into working capital and business project development, which took 1.3 billion rubles (approximately UAH 670 million). At the same time, 44% of this amount was issued as loans under a preferential program with support from the occupation authorities through the puppet 'Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Crimea'. Two more large investment projects have started receiving funding worth more than 1 billion rubles (over 520 million hryvnias).

According to the 'manager of the Sberbank branch in Crimea' Andrey Podsvirov, the bank is actively involved in financing dozens of entrepreneurs' projects, helping agribusinesses enter new niches and regions, purchase modern industrial equipment, and increase production capacity.

It is reported that the largest amount of credit support from Sberbank this year was received by companies engaged in grape growing and wine production. Financing in this area amounted to almost a billion rubles, or 45% of the total volume of contracts.

The second largest area of support is milk processing, and the third is berry and fruit growing. Thus, the Russian Sberbank uses a combination of federal and regional support programs, strengthening the financial colonization of the peninsula and the integration of its economy into Russian jurisdiction.

Катерина Глушко