Power Out in Crimea After Lines Blown Up

Moscow/Kiev: Crimea was left without electricity supplies from Ukraine on Sunday after pylons carrying power lines to the Russia-annexed peninsula were blown up overnight. The facility lines have been knocked down by saboteurs on Sunday, forcing tens of millions of residents to live with out electricity.

Crimea’s small Tartar community has accused Russian Federation of using repression since Moscow took over the peninsula.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has advocated for imposing a full-fledged ban that will halt all trade with Crimea and asked Mr. Yatsenyuk this week to begin assembling a working group to help plan its eventual implementation.

The sudden release of the letter nearly 20 days after he sent it also seemed to offer a subtle endorsement of the electricity protest.

Meanwhile, top official from Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Illya Kiva, reported that Russian military equipment was brought to the border between mainland Ukraine and Crimea.

Crimea’s leader Sergei Aksyonov suggested Ukraine was involved in the blasts and said Crimea’s prosecutors have opened their own criminal probe.

“I would urge Crimeans to be patient and to see what our situation is”, Aksyonov said.

Ukraine’s main exports to Crimea are paintwork materials, dairy products, liquor, alcohol-free beverages and confectionary, while the peninsula exports chemicals, paintwork materials and various types of equipment to Ukraine. A major irrigation canal was shut down in 2014, but significant rainfall and other local sources prevented serious damage to crops this year.

In September, Tatar activists opposed to Russia’s annexation of their indigenous homeland set up road blocks on roads leading from Ukraine to Crimea as part of an economic blockade aimed at dramatising the plight of Tatars in Crimea.

“The [Ukrainian] government’s inaction – let us put it this way – was the catalyst that made the leaders of the Crimean Tatar nation and its activists act”, said Ukrainian Crimean Tatar Nation Rights Defense Committee coordinator Synaver Kadyrov on Ukrainian television on November 23.

Goods from Russian Federation can just be ferried to Crimea across a thin strip of water known as the Kerch Strait. On Monday he said fix crews would be allowed access to the damaged towers, but “it is not right to supply electricity to occupied territory where the rights of our citizens are roughly violated”.

Ukraine is not repairing the sabotaged power lines supplying energy to the Crimean peninsula for “political reasons”, said Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak.