A recent statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry about the threat of a "cholera epidemic" in Kherson region due to Ukraine’s halting of water supplies to Crimea is false, as stated by former permanent representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Borys Babin.
Such an epidemic actually threatens the occupied peninsula, Babin said, according to Obozrevatel.
"The Russian Foreign Ministry allowed itself to threaten us with what essentially is bacteriological weapons. They threaten us with an epidemic in Kherson region, although it is clear that there can be no logical links between the blocked channel and the epidemiological situation. It is in Crimea that there is a connection between these things, in particular for residents of Simferopol region," said Babin.
According to the expert, the threat arose due to the onset of a dry weather period in Crimea.
Read alsoKremlin uses in e-warfare drilling rigs seized in Black Sea: OSINT group
"The lowering of groundwater leads to the erosion of burial grounds where there is cholera. Already twice, during the Soviet period and in 1994, there were epidemics in Simferopol. Perhaps this will happen again," he emphasized.
"It is not directly connected with the canal, it is connected with the dry period and with the Simferopol reservoir that does not feed from the canal. But this is typical for the peninsula, not for Kherson region," Babin said, commenting on Russian propaganda efforts.
Such statements, Babin says, may indicate that the occupiers are "expecting artificial provocations."
"Crimea, unlike Kherson region, is in the epidemiological risk zone during the dry period. This is due to the lack of sewage treatment plants and the fact that mountain reservoirs in Crimea were built during the Soviet times, as always in the USSR, without thinking what was being done," Babin concluded.
