Crimea without power after pylons blown up

Crimea has been plunged into darkness after pylons carrying power lines which supply electricity from Ukraine were reportedly blown up on Saturday night.

Russian officials say that emergency supplies had been turned on for critical needs.

More than 1.6 million people faced major power, water, internet and mobile phone disruption. After the blackout, Sevastopol’s thermal power station generation dropped to 8 megawatts, and now the generation has returned to normal operation.

Earlier on Friday, unidentified saboteurs damaged two of Kherson’s four electricity transmission towers, prompting Crimean authorities to issue warnings of possible power cuts.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said four power lines had been damaged and that two districts of Ukraine’s Kherson region were also left without power.

For more than two months, block Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activist’s goods transports in the Crimea and request the caps in the power supply from the leadership in Kiev.

The electricity feed from Ukraine was cut at 00:25am (2225 GMT), the Crimean branch of Russia’s emergency situations ministry said in a statement.

Russian Federation has blamed Ukrainian nationalists from far-right party Right Sector as well as Crimean Tatar activists, calling it “an act of terrorism”.

A senator representing the peninsula in Russia’s Federation Council told RIA Novosti on Monday that retaliatory measures, including halting coal exports to Ukraine, “could not be ruled out”.

Ilya Kiva, the head of the anti-narcotics department of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday that “the pylons have just been blown up'”.

According to the regional government, Crimea depends on Ukraine for its electricity supplies, providing only 30 per cent of its own energy.

Ukrainian authorities said that activists blocked the site when they tried to fix the damaged pylons.