Sandy beaches and warm shallow water of the Sea of Azov once attracted families and kaiters in Genichesk, the publication says. But this year, in the midst of August, the shores are empty.
Russian blogger Andrei Usynin, who lives in the Crimea, takes himself on the beach in Genichesk, calls him the “rustic style” and says that there is practically no infrastructure, but this is supposedly even good – there is no fuss. He assures that there will be a dozen years – and the place will turn into a “tourist Mecca”. This is only one of hundreds of bloggers, journalists and opinion leaders who depict the occupied territories as an attractive direction of rest, the newspaper writes.
Since 2024, the Kremlin invested hundreds of millions of rubles in the development of “tourism and hospitality” in the occupied parts of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions, the publication said.
The occupation authorities hope to develop “medical and health tourism” in Soviet-style sanatoriums, as well as “military-patriotic, industrial and pilgrimage tourism” on the coast of the Sea of Azov. In Crimea, local authorities act according to the same scheme: they arrange festivals and concerts, and Russian businessmen invest billions in hotels and real estate, the newspaper writes.
In particular, in the Kherson region, Russia is building a resort town for 30 thousand people with a promise of a preferential residence for “veterans” of war against Ukraine, the publication says.
Mariupol of the Donetsk region became the center of activity to attract tourists, the article says. In May, the mayor of Mariupol, who was appointed by Russia, Oleg Morgun said that the authorities were expecting a million tourists by 2030. It was also reported that in Russia a “school of bloggers” was opened, where content creators are taught to propagate to attract tourists to the city.
The publication notes that bloggers rarely reveal the “less glamorous” side of life in the occupied Ukrainian territory, where in recent weeks the water crisis erupted.
