In Crimea, Russian land grab feeds cries of ‘carpetbaggers’

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea — More than three years after Russia snatched Crimea from Ukraine, the peninsula is suffering through an extended season of discontent.

Kremlin-appointed bureaucrats are proving to be just as corrupt and inept as their Ukrainian predecessors. International sanctions, shrugged off in the heady days after the Russian annexation, have jacked up food prices while endlessly complicating ordinary aspects of life, such as banking and travel.

Perhaps most galling to Crimeans, the government is hauling thousands of residents into court to confiscate small land holdings distributed free as a campaign ploy in 2010 when Ukraine controlled the Black Sea peninsula.

Residents of Sevastopol, famous as a historic battleground and home to the Black Sea fleet, were among the most vocal, militant supporters of Russia when it annexed Crimea.

That was then.

“I supported reunification because I thought that with Russia’s arrival, things would improve,” said Lenur A. Usmanov, a rare outspoken Kremlin partisan from the Tatar minority who has become a serial protester. “But there is no change.”

The United Nations issued a report last week accusing Russian security agencies of committing “grave” human rights abuses since the annexation. Russia dismissed the report as “absurd” inventions spread by its opponents.

Locals largely focus on different complaints. They invariably denigrate the new bureaucrats as carpetbaggers, using the word “varyagi” in Russian, an old word for Viking outsiders, especially when it comes to land confiscation.

The city of Sevastopol claims it must repossess at least 10,000 plots to help create a rational development plan. The owners howl that the “mass land grab” will benefit crooked developers and senior officials who covet what when stitched together amounts to sprawling tracts of choice seaside property.

Sevastopol was once a center of the nation’s defense industries. But after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the plants all closed, and land remains the only significant resource left to the city, said Oleg Nikolaev, the restaurateur who also leads an official effort to attract new investors.