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Crimean wineries and parks: why we removed these materials
Editorial Position
Updated:9 min1,736 words

Crimean wineries and parks: why we removed these materials

Here there used to be three texts: fifteen Crimean wineries, twenty-five parks of the peninsula, and nine canyons. All three have been removed in all language versions.

We are giving a direct answer to the query people come here with. A wine tour, a botanical park, and a mountain trail on the Crimean peninsula (Ukraine), temporarily occupied by Russia, are not a "neutral part" of a trip. The peninsula's tourism economy after 2014 is built on property and investments that the European Union has prohibited by a direct legal provision, and the peninsula's indigenous people are subjected to systematic persecution. There are no names of businesses, addresses, or routes in this text.

💡 At a glance:

  • which three pieces were removed and why they stayed up longer than the city guides
  • what exactly Article 2a of Regulation 692/2014 prohibits
  • what is known about the persecution of Crimean Tatars and who documents it
  • which wine and nature destinations on the site remain live
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

The three texts were the "softest" part of the Crimea section, which is why they stayed in the catalog longer than the rest. Wineries, parks, and canyons looked like a conversation about land, climate, and landscape rather than about a state. That is exactly why they deserve a detailed explanation: if the genre does not work even here, it does not work anywhere. All three URLs now redirect to this page.

A winery roundup is, by its very structure, a list of operating businesses with an invitation to come and buy. A park catalog is a list of sites, each of which has an entity responsible for its upkeep. The canyon list comes closest to pure nature, but it too led the reader through the same infrastructure: transport, lodging, entry. None of the three texts said whose territory all of this is on and under whose rules it operates.

The general financial framework of this section applies here as well: the oil and gas share of the Russian budget has fallen to roughly 22 percent, while the non-oil-and-gas share, which includes service-sector taxes, has grown to roughly 78 (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 09.12.2025). The starting point for the decision across the entire section is February 24, 2022 (UN press release GA/12407, 02.03.2022), and for the peninsula it is 2014, when its status was recorded by UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 (text of the resolution).

What Article 2a prohibits

The Crimea regulation differs from the Russia-wide one in that it prohibits not only services but also ownership. Article 2a of Council Regulation (EU) No 692/2014 prohibits acquiring or expanding ownership of real estate in Crimea and Sevastopol, acquiring or expanding ownership or control over a legal entity on the peninsula, providing loans, credit, and financing, creating joint ventures, and providing investment services directly related to the above (EUR-Lex, consolidated version). Next to it is Article 2d(1), which prohibits services directly related to tourism activities in Crimea or Sevastopol, with no transition period.

The ban on all foreign investment on the peninsula and on services related to tourism activities, including the maritime sector, was introduced by Council Decision 2014/933/CFSP of December 18, 2014 and Regulation (EU) No 1351/2014 (text of the regulation). For the winery text this is the key detail: European law is not about the taste of the product but about the fact that a business on this territory cannot be bought, lent to, or serviced. We deliberately do not attribute sanctioned status to any specific winery and do not name any of them: we do not have a verified list, and guesswork is unacceptable in a text like this.

What is known about the persecution of Crimean Tatars

A park and a winery do not exist in a vacuum, and there are documents from international organizations about what is happening to the peninsula's indigenous people.

On April 26, 2016, a court controlled by the occupation administration declared the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people an "extremist organization" and banned its activities, and on September 29 of the same year the Supreme Court of Russia rejected the appeal and upheld the decision (Human Rights Watch, 29.09.2016). Amnesty International said at the time that this decision destroys one of the few remaining rights of a minority that Russia is obliged to protect, not persecute (Amnesty International, 26.04.2016).

The situation did not stay in the past. According to the Crimea Platform, as of July 22, 2026, 316 people on the peninsula are subjected to political persecution, of whom 169 are Crimean Tatars (Crimea Platform, summary of 22.07.2026). According to a separate count by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, cited in April 2026, 351 people are held in pretrial detention centers and penal colonies. The two organizations use different counting methods, so the figures do not match (Euromaidan Press, 21.04.2026). By early 2026, more than 120 people on the peninsula had become defendants in criminal cases over alleged ties to the organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. On June 26, 2026, the human rights movement Crimean Solidarity was added to the "foreign agents" register (Euromaidan Press, 22.07.2026).

We do not publish the names of those persecuted: these are people under pressure from the state, and publishing their personal data in a section that originated as travel content does not help them.

What this means for you if you are in the EU or the US

Item

Status 09/2026

Source

Territorial status

Part of Ukraine, temporarily occupied by Russia

A/RES/68/262

Real estate, shares, loans, joint ventures

Prohibited by Article 2a of Regulation 692/2014

EUR-Lex

Services related to tourism on the peninsula

Prohibited by Article 2d(1) of the same regulation

EUR-Lex

Foreign investment

Closed since 18.12.2014

Regulation 1351/2014

Political persecution

316 people as of 22.07.2026, of whom 169 are Crimean Tatars

Crimea Platform

Consular protection and transport

Consular protection unavailable; ports and airports closed

Auswärtiges Amt

Travel to Russia in general

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

Where to go instead

The query was about wine with on-site tasting, southern greenery, and mountain trails near the sea. The live sections of the site cover it fully: Italy and Spain for wine regions with a long tradition of hospitality, Portugal for the Douro Valley, France for classic appellations, Georgia for ancient qvevri winemaking, Slovenia and Croatia for small estates by the sea. Mountain routes near the coast are covered in detail in our materials on Montenegro and Greece.

The legal framework for the entire block is set out in the text on the status of the peninsula, and the neighboring text in the section on parks and the waterfront is the position on Yalta. The editorial team's overall decision is collected in the section hub.

Where we stand

We believe that a selection of wineries in occupied territory is a conversation about property disguised as a conversation about taste. In our assessment, that is exactly why such texts last longer than others: they look like culture, but they function as advertising for enterprises whose legal regime European law has addressed in a separate article.

We decided not to keep these materials even without the commercial component and not to publish their "nature" versions. A canyon in a list next to a winery and a park remains an entry in the same catalog.

We write about the state and its policies, not about people based on their passport. There are people in Russia who came out against the war and received prison sentences for it. Our decision not to publish travel guides to Russia is about money, sanctions, and reader safety, not nationality.

Publication date: September 3, 2026. Last updated: September 3, 2026.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

Wine is made by people, not states. Why did you delete these texts?

The issue is not with the people or the products. Our text was a list of operating businesses with an invitation to visit, and Article 2a cuts them off from investment and credit. We will not publish material that is promotional by genre on top of such a rule.

Are you saying that specific wineries are under sanctions?

No, and we state that explicitly. We are talking only about the territorial rule and do not name a single business.

Canyons and nature reserves are pure nature.

Nature itself is not disputed by anyone. There is no separate regime for natural sites in any of the cited rules.

Why does the text about parks include a section on persecution?

Because it is happening in the same territory and in the same years. We do not think it is possible to describe the peninsula as a vacation destination while not mentioning the documents of international organizations about the situation of its indigenous people.

In short

Three articles about wineries, parks, and canyons in Crimea have been removed in full. The ban on tourist services and Article 2a of EU Regulation 692/2014 on property and investment apply to the peninsula. Documents on the persecution of Crimean Tatars are collected in a separate section. The wine and nature destinations we continue to cover are listed above.

How you can help

We do not collect money and receive nothing from the links below. These are official websites of organizations working with the consequences of the war:

Sources

Link check dates: 03.09.2026.

tourism.com.de Editorial Team
tourism.com.de Editorial TeamTravel editorial team: research, fact-checking, updates→ All publications

A small editorial team writing guides for independent travel. We travel ourselves, but we haven’t been everywhere, so we check prices, opening hours and how to get there against official sources.