Russia's cunning plan: Crimea was left without Russian Railways

The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol have been part of the Russian Federation for the fifth year already. But the risk of falling under Western sanctions made the peninsula “toxic” for large domestic businesses. Sberbank, the country's main bank, rested for a long time and never opened a single branch in the Russian Crimea. All that was enough for him and VTB was to provide services to Crimeans through Internet banking.





Last year, the mobile operator MTS allocated Crimea to a separate region and introduced roaming, which was an extremely unpleasant surprise for some residents of the peninsula who received thousands of bills. By the way, MTS did not officially come to the peninsula. Now, Russian Railways decided to play the same game.

As you know, in the near future will be launched railway communication on the Crimean bridge. The monopolist in this market is Russian Railways, 100% owned by the state, which is of fundamental importance, unlike, for example, MTS. Russian Railways is a very interesting corporation. Unlike state-owned companies in the commodity sector, it has the right not to pay dividends to its sole owner until 2025. However, last year, top management made an exception, agreeing to pay dividends on real estate and wagons in the amount of 12 billion rubles. Where does such unexpected generosity come from?

The fact is that businessmen from the state came up with their "cunning plan" on how to circumvent Western sanctions. The Crimean railway will be bashfully allocated as a separate FSUE (federal state unitary enterprise). In order not to be caught in cooperation with the Crimea, Russian Railways transfers cars and trains to the state, and even then unsubscribes them to the Crimean Railway. How do you like the combination? For business - the very thing for self-esteem, upholding of national interests and international prestige by a 100% state-owned corporation - is somehow not very.

What is so afraid of the management of Russian Railways?

In fact, the domestic monopolist is very widely represented in foreign markets. Our specialists work in India, Iran, North Korea, Armenia, Mongolia, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. Projects are possible in other countries - Austria, Slovakia and even Japan. Revenues from foreign projects reach 500 billion rubles a year. True, such success has a downside. A significant part of such projects is carried out on loans taken by customers in Russian state-owned banks, and it is not a fact that some state of Cuba or North Korea will not write off these debts again.

So it turns out that all these curious financial schemes at foreign construction sites are more important for a state corporation than official work in the Russian Crimea. Just a business.