Tourists still daring to visit besieged Crimea: ‘People tell us we’re crazy’

Illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula is in dire straits. It has only two access routes; now both are hampered by Ukraine’s recent offensive. The region has also been hit badly by the fuel crisis in Russia. Situated on the Black Sea, Crimea was once considered a go-to tourist destination and its population of just 2.4 million would double every year due to visitors. No more.

Gas stations are prohibited from selling fuel to individuals and companies, and there are practically no tourists left, leaving the region without its main source of income. Visitors not only fear becoming stranded on the road, but they are put off by the constant power cuts and Ukraine’s shelling of military and energy facilities.

“We don’t sell fuel to the public. We are using all our resources to cover the basic needs of the city,” explains Natalia, the manager of a gas station in Feodosia, a tourist town founded by Greek settlers in the 6th century BC. “The food trucks refuel if they are on a list given to us by the administration. If a construction company has a public contract, they notify us too. The authorities coordinate all the information and assign a specific number of liters to each district,” she adds. So how do people get around? “Bicycle,” says a cashier at the gas station.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to isolate Crimea, a region that is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s biggest trophy in his 26 years in power and a platform for his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Under a state of emergency for a week, the peninsula is dominated by machine guns and anti-aircraft systems that aim to intercept Ukrainian drones and missiles. Meanwhile, its refineries and power plants are covered with fences and nets for protection although some Russian analyses suggest that as well as being ineffective these could make it difficult to put out fires.

Public transport at least operates normally. Its passengers note the intensity of Ukrainian attacks as they enter Feodosia: near the bus station there is a huge oil complex that was razed to the ground in May. After burning for days, the site has been reduced to odd formations that emerged from the molten metal from its tanks.

The gas station does not display the price of gas and diesel. Only one vehicle is refueled: a car with the Presidential Administration’s license plate. A dog lays sprawled across the entrance, fast asleep. The place is deserted.

In Crimea, selling fuel to citizens is prohibited, although some risk prison by reselling fuel on the roads. One exception is Sevastopol, a base for the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. Here you can refuel just once with a QR code granted by the administration. “If tourists have problems, the administration sends us the license plates so that they can fill up and leave Crimea,” adds the gas station manager.

Two tourists from Moscow and Volgograd, Maria and Ania, walk along the Feodosia waterfront. They arrived the week before with their parents. “We filled the tank in advance and brought two jerry cans with us,” Maria explains, indicating that these are holidays that require meticulous planning. “That way we will have enough fuel to return to the continent. We are saving gas. We don’t drive and, if we move, we use bikes or walk.”

“Everyone has gone. People tell us that we are crazy,” says Ania, who talks about the shelling. “If we didn’t have faith in God it would be terrifying. When you’re asleep and suddenly hear that noise, it’s as if your house is coming down. You know that something is happening and people are dying, but hey, war is war. We just have to accept the difficulties,” she says.

That same night a massive explosion shakes the north of the city at 2 a.m. It is pitch black. Out of the darkness comes the buzz of approaching drones. A minute later, chaos breaks out in a radius of 100 meters: bursts of machine gun fire and anti-aircraft guns, explosions and drones circling over houses before whistling into a nosedive.

“They began to hit oil deposits and the electricity grid intensely a few months ago. It’s okay, we’ll resist, everything will be fine,” says Lidia, a guard at the spectacular gallery that houses 50 works by the painter Ivan Aivazovsky in what was his former home in Feodosia. “These rooms used to be crowded [with visitors], now they are empty,” she says.

“The situation is worse than in previous years,” says Stepan, a student at the Feodosia Technical School. “I’m looking for a job and I can’t find anything. Everything revolves around tourism, but there’s no people and no money.”

A distant column of smoke rises on the horizon behind Feodosia beach. “We have power cuts and there is no gas, that is the main reason why [tourists] do not come. Apart from that, people are afraid,” Stepan adds.

His friend Aliya says, “Sometimes there is electricity, but only for a few hours and not every day. And it depends which street you are on.” Also a student, she says she was supposed to do an internship in June, “but it was cancelled the week before because it was dangerous to travel to Koktebel,” a small tourist town near Feodosia.

“Zero tourism,” agrees the owner of a small hotel in Feodosia. “There are no attacks here. There is no fuel, but the electricity works,” he adds shortly before a power cut that lasts several hours. In nearby restaurants they apologize for not being able to serve food: they do not have the electricity to preserve it.

Despite the growing difficulties in Crimea, there are no protests: the population simply accepts the restrictions. “The war is leaving its mark. Of course, I wish it would be over as soon as possible,” says Alexander, a middle-aged tourist in Feodosia. “Everything is gradually returning to normal. There has been a shortage of fuel and sometimes there is gunfire, but that is becoming less frequent,” he says. Shortly afterwards there was intense shelling and fresh power cuts.

The situation is the same in Sevastopol, one of the main tourist destinations on the peninsula. “Check that the ice cream is not spoiled,” a woman tells her assistant in one of the stores on the boardwalk that still has products for sale despite a long blackout. “The electricity comes and goes, and the fridges stop working,” she explains.

“You’ve been lucky, we’ve been three days without electricity or water,” says Nastia, a waitress in a café in the port that has nothing to sell. “The food spoiled, we had to throw away the carafes of water that were in the shops.”

The Union of the Russian Tourism Industry estimates that around 70% of hotel bookings in Crimea have already been cancelled. In a centrally located hotel in Sevastopol furnished with more than 300 rooms, only 15 guests are registered for breakfast, while in the Koktebel apartment building there is not a single occupant on its three floors.

Tourism in the midst of war

Crimea received 6.9 million tourists in 2025, according to the local Russian authorities, despite the war and the fact that traveling here is an odyssey as the airspace is closed. The fastest option is a 30-hour bus ride from Moscow, although you can try to scratch a few hours by flying to Krasnodar. The flight could well be cancelled, however, due to the presence of drones, a common occurrence.

But the situation has got worse and the tourism sector fears losing more than four million visitors this year. The restrictions have become stifling since Ukraine intercepted their access roads: to the north, the R-280 is monitored by new-generation drones that have destroyed hundreds of trucks; to the east, Ukrainian shelling has prevented the ferry from crossing the Kerch Strait as well as vehicles from crossing the bridge, while Russian trains run for just a few hours a day.

Sabotaged by Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, the Crimean bridge is protected by all kinds of defensive features and each vehicle is thoroughly searched before crossing. A bus can take up to two hours to cross even with only four vehicles ahead of it.

Posters explain what to do if you hear “1–Gunshots. 2–Explosions. 3−Bombings” or “you have been kidnapped.” The sudden sound of a siren gives Nastia a fright. She is traveling to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, to join her family. “What’s happening?” she asks. “Don’t worry, it’s not an air raid alarm,” an older man tells her. It was only the alert from the pontoon from which the checked vehicles leave.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 has not been recognized even by the Kremlin’s main partners; China, Iran, and Kazakhstan. Nor by any other nations in the global south such as Brazil, India, and South Africa. Since Russia’s occupation in 2014, Ukraine has insisted through diplomatic channels that it be returned and in 2021 founded the Crimea Platform, a political tool to maintain international pressure on Moscow.

However, the status of the peninsula has been one of the hundreds of excuses that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasion of Ukraine. In April 2021, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev falsely claimed Ukraine, backed by the U.S., was acting provocatively in Crimea and letting its own soldiers die to create a justification for military action.

Vladimir Putin had a very different view from today in 1999 when, as Russia’s prime minister, he said on TV that the Kremlin would not jeopardize the future of the country and its relationship with its neighbors by conquering the Black Sea peninsula: “We don’t want to take Crimea, that’s absolute nonsense,” he said. “If we start taking something from someone, then something will definitely be taken from us or we will lose something. In any case, initiating such a redistribution within the territory of the former Soviet Union would lead to consequences from which we may never recover.”

“The main problem in my opinion is Russia’s heavy imperial legacy,” Putin said at the time. “For some reason, everyone thinks that Russia remains an empire. People still view Russia as an empire and treat it as such but that hasn’t been the case for a long time now.” Fifteen year later, Putin broke international law and seized Crimea.

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