Titan in Crimea belongs to whom. “Crimean Titan” in Armyansk may be nationalized

Recently, conversations around Crimea have relatively calmed down, which is not surprising in connection with the events in the South-East (mostly, of course, the East) of Ukraine. However, we live in Crimea, so in this case Crimean affairs interest us more, especially since there is something to talk about. And it is certainly necessary to speak when it comes to the well-known plant, which is the largest producer of titanium dioxide in Eastern Europe, Crimean Titan.

It just so happened that after the all-Crimean referendum on March 16, 2014, the borders changed. And something like this had to happen, but it was “Titan” that found itself in a situation where it, in fact, was in two countries at the same time. Having remained geographically on the peninsula, and legally (from the end of April) in Kyiv, the plant found itself in a rather difficult situation.

Let's start with everything in order and start with the new legal address of the industrial giant. Not so long ago, on April 25, the news spread throughout the media that the Crimean “Titan” had changed its address from Armyansk to Kyiv. Thus, the National Commission for State Energy Regulation reissued licenses to the plant for the right to exist and carry out activities for the supply of electricity. However, on the part of Group DF, which includes Titan, this was a completely logical move (we will not go into political issues, we are just stating a fact).

However, if we could stop our thoughts here, then the text simply did not make any sense, so we continue. Now we turn to the issue of supplies of raw materials for production. As you know, the main raw materials come to the plant from the Dnepropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions of Ukraine, which in this situation will slightly complicate the process of delivering goods both to the territory of Crimea and when exporting to the mainland. How this will affect Titan is not yet known, but the very fact of possible delays in delivery (especially considering that the border is located directly next to the plant) exists and will have to be dealt with over time.

Another important question that interests Titan employees is “what will happen next?” In fact, at the moment, about 5 thousand people are involved in the work of the enterprise, most of whom live in the city of Armyansk and its environs, who in the near future need to obtain a new Russian citizenship for them. However, there is a small percentage of workers from the mainland. This is where the problems begin. Either those from the mainland need additional documentation to cross the border almost every day, or Crimean workers will become “foreigners” on Titan, with all that entails. Time will tell how this issue will be resolved, but for now, everything continues to work as usual.

And the last question for today is the supply of water to Crimea from the mainland. At the moment, accordingly, there is simply no water. The following point is noteworthy here - like any other production, Titan needs water for technical needs. And as we all know, supplies are never endless and the Crimean Titan reservoir is empty.

But even here it is too early to ring the bell. The plant is operating normally, there is enough raw material and water, and in case of shortage, the company undertakes to notify its employees about a force majeure situation 10 days in advance.

This is the situation. It would seem that the complicated situation should have affected production, but no. According to a report on April 16, 2014, Titan only increased its capacity in the first quarter compared to last year - titanium dioxide by 6%, sulfuric acid by 9%. According to Sergei Kosenko, Chairman of PJSC Crimean Titan, the enterprise operates stably and fulfills all its obligations.

Interesting information about the Crimean Titan plant. This is the same plant that staged a small environmental crisis. disaster...

We read carefully: The enterprise is organized into two parallel structures. Formally, the plant still belongs to the Ukrainian Chemical Products joint-stock company registered in Kyiv, which is part of Dmitry Firtash’s chemical holding Ostchem. Dmitry Firtash controls Crimean Titan through the German company Ostchem Germany, the Austrian Ostchem Holding GmbH and the Cypriot Fleori Enterprises Ltd.

Firtash controls the plant through the German Ostchem Germany, the Austrian Ostchem Holding GmbH and the Cypriot Fleori Enterprises Ltd. The founder of Ukrainian Chemical Products is the German company Ostchem Germany, which belongs to the Austrian Ostchem Holding GmbH. The ultimate owner is the Cypriot Fleori Enterprises Ltd. Thus, the Ukrainian Chemical Products company, through a number of companies in Germany, Austria and Cyprus, is controlled by billionaire Dmitry Firtash and the sister of the former head of the Presidential Administration of the times of Viktor Yanukovych, Yulia Lyovochkina. However, legally the Ukrainian company does not currently manage Crimean Titan. In the summer of 2014, the plant was “leased” to the newly created Moscow company “Titanium Investments”.

According to the Russian Register of Legal Entities (USRLE), this company belongs to the Cypriot company Letan Investments Limited. Its founder, according to the Cyprus registry, is the general director of Crimean Titan, Alexander Emelin. At the same time, Dmitry Firtash is the beneficiary.

Where is Firtash himself? He has been in Austria since 2014 under recognizance not to leave, awaiting extradition to the United States.

The export of titanium dioxide produced in Armyansk to Western countries continues today. The distributor of Crimean Titan products in the West is the Swiss company Tolexis Enterprises AG, controlled by Firtash, registered in the canton of Zug. It sells products whose manufacturer is listed as Ukrainian Chemical Products. But according to the reports of Ukrainian Chemical Products, its export revenue is constantly declining, and its losses are growing.

One reason for this is logistical difficulties. Supplies of raw materials from mainland Ukraine to Crimea are prohibited by sanctions imposed by Kiev. However, raw materials are sent from Ukrainian ports by ship. In the Kerch Strait, raw materials are reloaded and transported to Crimea by Russian ships.

In order to reduce logistics costs, the management of the Titanium Investments company registered in Russia, according to Russian media, plans at its own expense to build a railway line by the end of 2019 that will connect the enterprise with the railway tracks, which by that time should connect the peninsula with Russia through the Kerch bridge. But it’s not a fact that this will happen. Bye

It is not clear how the losses of Crimean Titan are covered. See above that all companies are registered in EU countries: Germany, Austria and Cyprus. The funds of these companies are in banks in Cyprus, as well as in accounts in the Swiss branch of Gazprombank.

It’s also worth saying that all ten years before Crimea became Russian, Dmitry Firtash controlled Crimean Titan, but the issue of environmental safety of production was not resolved. He wanted to invest money in safety! But there is also a question: does it make sense to nationalize this plant today?

Anna Kozyreva

Discussion of the article

Definitely close it.

Crimea should be an ecologically clean area.

Ukraine will take care of the employment of the population.

At the plant, more than half of the workers are residents of Ukraine.

I just want to clarify your comment so that it is clear what the reproach to the author is.

The problem of the so-called writing fraternity, it’s impossible to call them journalists, is that not all of them have an analytical mind, or just intelligence, add here a text that is simple to the point of wretchedness according to the principle of writing it somehow and okay - that’s the problem. Listing true facts is one type of presentation of material, but when a person claims to write an analytical article, it requires high intelligence, which, unfortunately, many of all these home-grown hacks and bloggers do not possess

Anna, let’s say the article is good, the data is correct. But why do you write so illiterately??????

Or a poor student was typing a text... then why are you signing?

It’s a shame to even repost!!!

The company belongs to Firtash, and he is Vladimir Vladimirovich’s business partner. Or do you want to say that the king doesn’t care about his country of residence?

Everything everywhere belongs to moneylenders. American origin, Ukrainian or Russian. The moneylender does not care about the country of residence; it serves him to milk the money.

common sense dictates: if there are no tax revenues to the budget, if profits are transferred abroad, this is a minus, but if there are jobs and people receive salaries, then it’s kind of crooked, but there is a benefit. Probably, the question should be posed as follows: are there any levers of influence on the owners or beneficiaries in order to force them to modernize the plant from the point of view of environmental safety. If there is and nothing is being done - that is, “interested parties” are being fed, and if there are no levers of influence - then if they have already been able to transfer it to another jurisdiction and there is another, as it were, owner, then the question is whether it is possible to nationalize everything without must stand. This is a matter of political will. But only

14:00 — REGNUM How the Crimean authorities and the management of Europe’s largest producer of titanium dioxide allowed an environmental disaster in the north of the Russian peninsula, the scale and consequences of which no one can still understand - in the review IA REGNUM.

Ivan Shilov © IA REGNUM

On the anniversary of independence

Messages from alarmed residents of the small industrial town of Armyansk and nearby villages in the north of the Crimean peninsula about an unknown “rusty coating” that they found on the streets and in their homes appeared on social networks just in time for Ukraine’s next independence day – August 24. Suspicion fell on a large chemical plant of a Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash“Crimean Titan”, which is going through hard times: last year’s roof collapse in one of the workshops, serious litigation with creditors, workers’ dissatisfaction with low wages, etc.

armyansk.rk.gov.ru

In the first days, municipal and republican authorities remained silent and did not publicly respond to complaints from residents of northern Crimea, and the plant’s management diligently disowned the problem. Almost a week later, after a new release of chemicals on August 30-31, referring to the expert opinion, the head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov several times assured the public that the health of people living in Armyansk was not in danger.

A week later, about four thousand children and disabled people under 18 years of age began to be evacuated from the town (adults remained in the disaster zone), increasing people’s panic and distrust of the officials’ words. The forced two-week holiday was then extended until September 25.

The office of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in Crimea opened a criminal case on grounds of violation of the rules for handling environmentally hazardous substances and waste.

The first versions of the state of emergency

Preliminary results of an inspection by a special commission consisting of representatives of almost all regulatory authorities of Crimea showed a significant excess of the maximum permissible concentration of sulfur dioxide in the region - almost ten times, ammonia by one and a half times, as well as hydrogen chloride.

Head of Rospotrebnadzor of the Russian Federation Anna Popova upon arrival in Armyansk, she confirmed that the cause of concentrated chemical emissions was the kilometer-long acid reservoir of the Crimean Titan, which was severely dehydrated after the Ukrainian authorities blocked the North Crimean Canal in 2014. That is, a consistently low water level and a high concentration of acid activated a “time bomb,” which led to dangerous emissions into the atmosphere.

“The Kiev regime is not going to meet us halfway. They will continue to poison their residents who live there, so it is unlikely that common sense will force them to supply water. We will do it ourselves" “, said Sergei Aksyonov at the end of the first week of September, who had previously assured that there are no threats to the health of the residents of the north of Crimea, who are separated from their Ukrainian neighbors by ten kilometers and the state border.

At the same time, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Dmitry Polonsky was confident that the situation would be resolved soon.

“The problem concerns exclusively Armyansk, as well as two neighboring villages in the Krasnoperekopsky district, Filatovka and Pyatikhatka; there is no threat to other settlements. But there are those who deliberately spread rumors and false information about the current state of affairs.” ,” Polonsky noted.

But a week and a half after these words, experts recorded another powerful release of chemicals, and the authorities nevertheless introduced a state of emergency, and the Crimean Ministry of Health additionally sent doctors to Armyansk, as the number of citizens seeking medical help continued to increase.

“The introduction of a state of emergency is certainly the right step. Maybe this should have been done earlier... If these gases have already entered the atmosphere, then we do not have effective methods to effectively reduce the concentration in the shortest possible time. We rely more on natural cleansing: the wind rose and precipitation.” ,” a professor at the Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the Crimean Federal University expressed his opinion on a local radio station. Alexey Gusev.

According to him, harmful emissions can spread to other regions of the peninsula depending on the direction of air flows, and the possibility of acid precipitation also remains.

armyansk.rk.gov.ru

So what did they do?

At first, they decided to organize the water supply through the construction of a ten-kilometer cast-iron water pipeline to transfer sea water from Karkinitsky Bay to the acid reservoir, since there were no other sources of water left on the peninsula. True, after the cost of implementing the project was revealed - about one billion rubles - confident rhetoric was immediately replaced by doubts.

“The expert community and authorities have not yet fully studied the effect of sea water on the acidic environment of the storage tank. You also need to take into account the cost of the project, the implementation of which will take from 6 to 16 months. This resource must be available." , - said at an offsite meeting in Armyansk on September 17, the deputy chairman of the State Committee for Water Management and Land Reclamation of the Republic of Kazakhstan Andrey Lisovsky.

Then the head of Crimea even stated that, more than three weeks after the incident, the authorities still do not know what provoked it.

“We do not have the right to spend budget funds without establishing the real causes of chemical emissions in the north of Crimea, since it is unclear how effective the measures taken will be” “, said Sergei Aksyonov, clarifying that work to eliminate the consequences is currently being carried out at the expense of the plant.

The next day, government officials already started talking about the possible return of Crimean Titan to state ownership.

“I believe that the owner of the enterprise that caused them should deal with the elimination of the consequences... If the owner is financially unable to do this and the entire burden falls on the shoulders of the state, the question will also arise about taking the plant into state ownership.” ,” the head of the Republic of Kazakhstan emphasized.

In the end, after negotiations with the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government DMitri Kozak, the issues of stabilizing the situation were transferred to the shoulders of federal structures.

“Rosprirodnadzor will be responsible for recommendations regarding the elimination of consequences at the plant’s acid storage facility, since this issue is under its jurisdiction. At the same time, Rospotrebnadzor will develop recommendations related to human health. There will be a distribution of powers and assignment of responsibilities between representatives of federal executive authorities who work in the territory of the Republic of Crimea" , - said Sergei Aksyonov.

That is, in more than three weeks, the Crimean authorities not only failed to cope with the emergency situation and develop any specific steps to solve it, they even failed to understand the reasons for its occurrence. It is also unclear why the leaders of Armyansk and the regulatory authorities that missed this environmental disaster have not yet resigned.

What about the plant?

The chemical enterprise, which in the spring of 2018 reached its design capacity of 8.5-10 thousand tons of titanium dioxide per month, the price per ton of which fluctuates on the market around 100 thousand rubles, completely stopped production on September 9. The next day, the Crimean Arbitration Court recovered from him almost 737 million rubles under an old claim from Rosprirodnadzor for “negative impact on the environment.” By the way, for the same offense in May 2017, the Armenian City Court ordered Crimean Titan to pay 74 million rubles.

Telling the press about the urgent measures that have already been taken to combat chemical emissions, the plant director Andrey Akulov announced the launch of the production of lime milk at a rate of 5 to 10 cubic meters per hour, which is capable of neutralizing wastewater in the storage tank.

armyansk.rk.gov.ru

And in the next two to three months, according to him, two deep wells will be drilled, which, together with nine others, will supply water to the reservoir from a depth of 270 meters.

Akulov did not specify why the plant did not do this earlier. Although it is difficult to believe that, knowing the dire situation with water in the northern part of the peninsula, Crimean Titan specialists had no idea about the consequences that befell the region at the end of August.

But the administration of the enterprise took the path of least resistance, deciding to switch the arrows to a version of ““”, which is very convenient for modern Crimean officials, announcing the destruction of the acid storage dam by the neighboring state. They even contacted the FSB about this.

“Half of the dam is located in Russia, half in Ukraine. We noticed that it was partially destroyed on the territory of Ukraine, but from here we cannot visually see how much it is destroyed and whether salt water is entering the reservoir... This is already a question for the competent authorities.” , said Akulov.

Why this hole was discovered only three weeks later, and by representatives of the plant, and not by the competent authorities, in particular, specialists from the prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee, who have been working there since the beginning of September, is also not clear.

“One among strangers, a stranger among one’s own”?

If we study the career path of oligarch Dmitry Firtash in more detail, we can assume that he is not so Ukrainian as is commonly called today. Having made a fortune through mediation in the Russian-Ukrainian gas trade, in the 2000s he was one of Gazprom’s key partners in Ukraine in the process of organizing the transit of Russian gas to Europe.

In recent years, things have not been going well for the gas tycoon, as well as for his plant - he is being actively pursued by the United States: on March 12, 2014, Firtash was in Vienna at the request of the FBI.

However, in 2015, a local court refused to extradite him, ruling that the charges against him were politically motivated. Formally, the Americans accused the tycoon of giving a large bribe for licenses to develop titanium deposits in India, but many experts associate this case with the desire of the Americans to use his help to collect incriminating evidence on Russia’s top leadership. On March 21, 2014, Firtash was released on bail, a record for Austria. According to foreign media reports, 125 million euros were paid in cash for the oligarch by a Russian billionaire, president of the Russian Judo Federation Vasily Anisimov.

In addition, Dmitry Firtash, according to him, has friendly relations with the main builder of the Crimean Bridge Arkady Rotenberg- he spoke about this in an interview with Bloomberg in 2014 in Vienna,

Today, former assistant to First Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea Mikhail Sheremet, Vladimir Garnachuk, published a video of the area around the plant, filmed by a quadcopter. It shows not only the acid reservoir, whose fumes, according to the authorities, turned the life of neighboring Armyansk into a post-apocalypse, but also huge areas of white matter. Apparently this is phosphogypsum waste.

The acid storage tank itself turned out to be not some kind of industrial tank, but a lake with an area of ​​1 square meter. km. Nearby there are kilometers of fields with buildings destroyed as if after a bombing, and the plant itself with red and white patina on the roofs.

In the back right corner is an acid accumulator, a white field is presumably phosphogypsum waste

Sivash comes close to all this. If the Red Army soldiers stormed it today, they would probably dissolve in the poisonous green and orange waters, like sugar in tea. But today in these places everything is different: the border with Ukraine runs right through the acid reservoir. It goes around the Crimean Titan like a wedge, leaving the plant owned by the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash in Russia.

[]Immediately beyond the border line, the villages of the Kherson region are visible - Pervokonstantinovka, and 12 more. Many are much closer to the acid lake than Armyansk.

Meanwhile, children are being evacuated from Armyansk. The Crimean authorities have finally recognized the seriousness of the situation. True, it looks somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, officials continue to assure that living in the city is safe. On the other hand, Prime Minister Sergei Aksenov admitted that it will take 7 months to eliminate the cause of the emissions (at first they said it was hydrogen chloride, now it is sulfur dioxide). This is the best case scenario. Because the acid lake is steaming due to a lack of fresh water, which is supposed to be used to dilute the acid. And they haven’t diluted it in the required volumes for four years – ever since Ukraine blocked the North Crimean Canal.

As “Notes” have repeatedly written before, the canal fed underground aquifers, from which Armyansk and the city-forming enterprise “Crimean Titan” were supplied with water through wells. After the canal was turned off, water sources began to gradually deplete and become salty.

The first alarming reports about this appeared back in 2016. However, Crimean Titan still required a lot of fresh water to maintain its production cycle - and it continued to pump it from wells. According to the latest data, drilling is already underway at depths of 400 meters.

[]For Armyansk, the depletion of subsoil is fraught with a complete cessation of centralized water supply and a transition to imported water. But if the plant stops, there will be no work in the city and thousands of residents will have to be resettled in any case. But where? There is no money, no space, no jobs for them in Crimea.

The events of the last week have shown that in addition to dehydration, the city is facing another problem. The management of the Crimean Titan plant is accustomed not to advertise the risks of its daily activities. For the time being, it was not spread that the lack of water is fraught with emissions from the acid storage tank.

As Crimean Titan employees told Notes, due to a shortage of water from wells at the plant, used water is purified and used in a second round, and then poured into an acid storage tank. But this water and this purification are not enough to dilute the acid in the lake. As a result, at night, when the temperature changed over the brown lake, an acrid fog began to form, settling on all surfaces.

The map shows that the distance from the acid storage tank to the city is 27 km. Within this radius are the Russian villages of Perekop and Suvorovo, and several Ukrainian ones.

If we draw a circle around the plant with a radius of 27 km, it will include the Ukrainian villages of Chervony Chaban, Stavki, Aleksandrovka, Gavrilovka, Makarovka, Mirnoye, Polevoe, Pervokonstantinovka, Grigorovka, Pavlovka, Stroganovka, Ivanovka. Depending on the direction of the wind, emissions from the Crimean Titan can reach the regional center - Chaplinka.

The small circle in the center is an acid storage tank near the walls of the plant with an area of ​​1 sq. km. Large circle - possible spread of the release along a ring with a radius of 27 km. This is the distance from the acid lake to Armyansk

If you look at a satellite map, you can see that around the plant on both sides of the border there are endless fields and farms. The emissions have already destroyed the greenery in the Armyansk area. Residents of the Kherson region also complain about rust and respiratory problems.

The vast areas around the Crimean Titan can be saved by diluting the acid in the storage tank with water. But today, at a meeting with residents of Armyansk, Sergei Aksenov admitted: in the four years since the canal was blocked, the acid reservoir has lost 30 million cubic meters of water. There is not such a quantity not only in the north of Crimea - there are no free volumes on the entire peninsula.

Now, according to Aksenov, experts are assessing how the storage device will behave if the acid is diluted with salty sea water from the neighboring Karkinitsky Bay. But even if the chemical reaction is not aggressive, it will take, let us remind you, at least seven months to fill the lake. After all, first you need to lay pipes to the storage tank from the bay, and then wait until it is filled. The rate is approximately 60 thousand cubic meters of water per day.

Aksnov says that the acid lake is “bare” for the first time in 20-25 years. But, judging by the publications of the Ukrainian media 5-7 years ago, harmful emissions in Armyansk have long become commonplace.

In 2011, the publication perekop.ru reported that the area of ​​acid and sludge storage facilities at the Crimean Titan reaches 42 square meters. km, but this is not enough for Firtash’s plant. There is also an acute problem with the disposal of phosphogypsum, one of the toxic wastes of chemical production.

According to the Perekop resource for 2012, Crimean Titan contains five waste disposal sites (WDU), including an acid storage facility in the northwestern part of Sivash. According to the accepted classification, all of them are assigned the highest category of environmental hazard - “G”, i.e. "extremely dangerous storage facility."

In the same year, Krasnoperekopsk.net wrote that on the territory of the main industrial site of Crimean Titan there are 290 stationary sources of pollutant emissions. In Armyansk, according to the publication, even then there was an excess of maximum one-time maximum permissible concentrations (MPC) for dust up to 1.6 MAC, for hydrogen fluoride up to 2.9 MAC, for ammonia - 1.6 MAC. A similar picture was observed in neighboring Krasnoperekopsk.

In the spring of 2012, the Department of Statistics in Crimea

In chapter

The threat of bankruptcy of Crimean Titan has become a reality. And although the Crimean leadership categorically promises not to allow it, VTB is confident that there is no place under the Crimean sun for a company that converts valuable raw materials into low-value products. Thousands of plant workers and members of their families may also lose it.

Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors

The Moscow Arbitration Court, following a claim by VTB, established surveillance over the company " Titanium Investments" In practice, the monitoring procedure almost always means preparation for bankruptcy. It is not “Titanium Investments” that is going to bankrupt VTB, but “ Crimean titan"is one of the largest enterprises on the peninsula for the production of titanium dioxide, fertilizers and other chemical compounds.

Titanium Investments LLC - Russian mirror of the Ukrainian corporation Ukrainian Chemical Products, part of Group DF - a group of companies Dmitry Firtash, whom the Russian president once ironically called "an outstanding figure of our time." Since the spring of 2014, this “outstanding figure” has been in Austria, being restricted from traveling abroad.

Ukrainian Chemical Products is the new Ukrainian face of the “old” joint-stock company “Crimean Titan”. It is in this form that it now appears among the assets of Group DF in both English and Russian versions (“Ukrainian Chemical Products”). “Titanium investments” became a technical tool created to circumvent sanctions with the help of employee Dmitry Firtash - Alexandra Emelina and the Cyprus company Letan Investments Limited/

Divorce in Ukrainian

The scheme for circumventing sanctions turned out to be no less effective in the process of withdrawing funds from VTB. The bank issued a loan of 2.5 billion rubles to a plant in Armyansk. The loan was taken out by a Ukrainian corporation, and a Russian company acted as a co-borrower. It is not known for certain where the money ended up going, but in the summer of 2016, when the deadline to repay the loan came, it turned out that there was no money and there was no one to give it to. To the President of VTB Andrey Kostin and it took his lawyers more than a year to realize the fact that billions would not come from Ukraine, and to start suing the Russian mirror of the company. In November 2017, the Moscow Arbitration Court received a claim to declare Titanium Investments LLC bankrupt.

At the end of February, the first court hearing took place, where representatives of Titanium Investments (predictably) stated that, relatively speaking, “they did not see any loan, and all the money went to the Ukrainian company.” After which they proposed to suspend the hearings in order to allow the parties to negotiate to conclude a settlement agreement. VTB’s response was categorical to the point of cruelty: “All possible negotiations that could be held with the debtor have already been held. The possibilities for a peaceful settlement have now been exhausted.".

In other words, Andrei Kostin is ready for war with Dmitry Firtash. The banker has economics and business on his side. More precisely, their absence.

The economics of a bad business

The tragedy of Crimean Titan is that the enterprise absorbs expensive goods as raw materials - ilmenite, gas and water, and produces relatively low-value products - titanium dioxide, which is mainly used for the production of paints. To produce these products, the company has to perform truly Herculean actions.

To produce titanium dioxide at Crimean Titan, ilmenite concentrate supplied from the Ukrainian Volnogorsk and Irshansky mining and processing plants is used as a raw material. These deliveries infuriate Ukrainian social activists who are deeply concerned about sanctions violations. They track every shipment and demand that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies put an end to this outrage. The latest revelation was shown on Ukrainian television just before the Arbitration Court meeting.

After viewing it, you may get the impression that the authors forgot to add three capital letters to the credits - the name of the bank that filed the claim. Ukrainian security forces reacted suspiciously quickly to these “revelations” and seized the documentation of one of the ships, which constitutes an element of the “ilmenite express” - a chain of transshipments, as a result of which ilmenite ore ends up at the Armenian plant.

Until 2014 capacity Volnogorsky And Irshansky GOK leased the structures of Dmitry Firtash, but after the change of power in Kyiv and the departure of Crimea to Russia, they refused the lease, transferring management to the state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC). The supply logistics have not changed as a result of this reshuffle.

In addition to the political explanation for the change of managers, there is also a more mundane reason - economic. Both mining and processing enterprises are finalizing their resources - Volnogorsk has 3-4 years of raw materials left, and Irshansky has 7-8 years left.

Owners of new ilmenite deposits rely on metallurgy (titanium production) rather than on the chemical industry. This is due to the growing demand for titanium in the aviation industry. As a result, supplies for metallurgical purposes have increased at least twice in recent years - from 5% to 10%.

Production at the Armenian plant itself is based on outdated technology, which allows the use of only 70% of the feedstock (the remaining 30% simply goes into dumps. A by-product of the production of titanium dioxide - sulfuric anhydride (SO3), which when combined with water forms sulfuric acid, also ends up there. acid. The Crimean lands flooded with sulfuric acid are exactly what is now missing from the image of Crimea - as a new promising tourist cluster.

Like any chemical production, the production of titanium dioxide requires a significant amount of water. Since Ukraine blocked the canal with Dnieper water back in 2014, Crimean Titan switched to using artesian water, which comes from three wells.

The local population is supplied on a residual basis. As a result, according to local data, salt water sometimes flows from the taps in local residents' homes.

To solve the problem, it was proposed to build a desalination station, but the project has not yet been implemented due to its high cost (about 50 billion rubles) and the lack of an investor.

Another blow to production was the decision to stop production at the largest gas field in the Crimean shelf zone - Odessa. From a formal point of view, this field provided half of Crimea’s gas needs. In reality, gas from Odessa went exclusively to Dmitry Firtash’s plant. Back in 2016, Ukraine filed a claim with the international arbitration court regarding this fact (the field is located near Odessa and, in principle, has nothing to do with Crimea). But the decision to stop production became known just before the bankruptcy hearing.

Real Enemies

Despite all the economic arguments and the obviously losing position of the “Crimean Titan” (regardless of who will represent its interests in court), VTB representatives will in fact have to fight with the Crimean authorities, for which the main problem is not the economy, but the social and political dimension problems of Armyansk.

Head of Crimea Sergey Aksenov back in October 2017 (that is, before filing the claim), he instructed to inform him directly when the risk of stopping Crimean Titan appeared on the horizon. For the head of Crimea, the priority issue is the employment of almost 5 thousand employees of the enterprise in the city of Armyansk, and members of their families. There is no alternative to the “Crimean Titan” in this bearish corner of the peninsula. The proximity to the Ukrainian border only aggravates and does not solve the problem.

Apparently, in this situation, the problems of a small Crimean town will soon turn into a serious test for Andrei Kostin and his entourage.