Housing construction in Crimea shrank by more than 60 percent in 2015 — a year after Moscow annexed the peninsula from Ukraine — marking the greatest decline among all of Russia's regions, according to a state statistical service report released Monday.
Overall, housing construction in Russia was down 0.5 percent in 2015 from the previous year, although some regions posted increases.
The Far East Magadan region, for example, reported that housing construction was up 59 percent, and the northwest republic of Komi and the central Tula region both reported increases of about 33 percent.
Housing construction in Moscow was up 16 percent, although it was down 15 percent in the Moscow region. The situation was reversed in the city of St. Petersburg and its surrounding region, with construction down 7 percent in the city, but up 30 percent in the suburbs.
In Crimea, however, housing construction in 2015 stood at only 39 percent of its 2014 level, a decline of more than 60 percent.
Crimea's port of Sevastopol, the base of Russia's Black Sea naval fleet, fared only slightly better — the amount of housing built there last year amounted to just under 43 percent of the 2014 level.
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