SIMFEROPOL, November 12. /TASS/. Crimea's authorities nationalized the Aivazovskoye health resort that belonged to Ukrainian oligarch and supporter of new Ukrainian authorities Sergey Taruta, who was appointed by Kiev to head the Donetsk Region from March to October 2014.
The nationalization decision was unanimously made at a meeting of the Crimean State Council (parliament). A new administration will be appointed soon and free access for residents to the resort’s territory will be opened, State Council speaker Vladimir Konstantinov told journalists.
Aivazovskoye, situated at the foot of the Ayu-Dag mountain on Crimea’s southern coast, occupies an area of some 25 hectares.
In late October, Crimea’s prosecutor’s office completed a check on violation of laws by the health center’s officials - wages were not paid to employees, access of nationals to the adjacent territory was closed; besides, the resort leased land of the natural reserve fund.
This was not the first facility nationalized in Crimea after the peninsula joined Russia. In early September, the State Council of Crimea decided to nationalize more than 70 facilities that belonged to another well-known Ukrainian oligarch, involved in financing hostilities in southeast Ukraine, Igor Kolomoisky.
The facilities include the well-known state dacha in the village of Foros where then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev spent a few days during a coup in August 1991.
Before the 1917 revolution in Russia, Crimea was the favorite resort of Russian aristocrats. It turned into an all-Union health center in Soviet times.
In late March 2014, Russia’s presidential property management department announced audit of all state facilities, residences and hotels on the Crimean Peninsula. Later, the Crimean leadership announced nationalization of all Ukrainian state property facilities on the peninsula, including state dachas and residences.
The Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean Peninsula, where most residents are Russians, refused to recognize the legitimacy of authorities brought to power amid riots during a coup in Ukraine in February 2014.
Crimea and Sevastopol adopted declarations of independence on March 11. They held a referendum on March 16, in which 96.77% of Crimeans and 95.6% of Sevastopol voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the reunification deals March 18.
Despite Moscow’s repeated statements that the Crimean referendum on secession from Ukraine was in line with the international law and the UN Charter and in conformity with the precedent set by Kosovo’s secession from Serbia in 2008, the West and Kiev have refused to recognize the legality of Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
Crimea had joined the Russian Empire in 1783, when it was conquered by Russian Empress Catherine the Great.
In the Soviet Union, Crimea used to be part of Russia until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party, transferred it to Ukraine's jurisdiction as a gift.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea became part of newly independent Ukraine and remained in that capacity until March 2014, when it reunified with Russia after some 60 years as part of Ukraine.
Work to integrate the Crimean Peninsula into Russia’s economic, financial, credit, legal, state power, military conscription and infrastructure systems is actively underway now that Crimea has acceded to the Russian Federation.