Tourist trade in annexed Crimea on brink as coronavirus bites

FILE PHOTO: Tourists make their way across a rope bridge on the Ai-Petri peak in the Crimean mountains outside the Black Sea resort of Yalta, Crimea, July 20, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Crimean hostel owner Natalia Kirichenko has given up hope of hosting guests this summer as the coronavirus outbreak threatens to ruin the economy of the tourism-dependent region that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Like more than half of the workforce on the Black Sea peninsula, Kirichenko's livelihood depends on a steady influx of Russian tourists during its balmy summer months.