Pro-Ukraine activists block fix of sabotaged power lines to Crimea

Crimea is trying to restore power after two of its main electricity lines were blown up Sunday.

The Ukrainian government said on Monday it has chose to temporarily suspend the movements of cargos across the contact line between Ukraine’s southern Kherson region and the Crimean peninsula.

The issue of supplies coming from Ukraine has been a repeated source of tension, as food, water, and electricity still flow from the mainland to the peninsula.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea triggered punitive Western sanctions on Moscow, which a diplomat told Reuters on Sunday would stay in place until at least July 2016.

The action follows weeks of protests at border crossings, where Crimean Tatars and right-wing Ukrainian nationalists have been disrupting truck traffic into Crimea, including a complete blockage for the past week.

Ukrainian police and journalists simultaneously posted social media reports of explosions in Chaplinka in the Kherson region, where power transmission towers supporting the lines delivering energy to Crimea are located. Ukrainian activists stopped repair crews from getting to the pylons to fix them. According to Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, the first stage of the power bridge between Russia’s Krasnodar region and Crimea will be commissioned on December 20.

The Tatar activists who blockaded the broken website stated they would thwart repairs until Russian Federation let go political prisoners & allowed global organizations to monitor human rights in Crimea. Meanwhile, fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine has increased.

The peninsula of 2 million people is relying on emergency generators to meet its basic power needs, with pro-Ukrainian activists, including nationalist battalions and ethnic Tatars, preventing repairs.

Russian Federation is laying undersea cables to Crimea to ease dependence on Kiev and is also planning to build gas-powered power stations which would burn gas piped from the mainland. Coal imported by sea can cover only two thirds of consumption due to limited port capacities, Energy Minister Demchyshyn said Monday.

So far, Crimea has enough fuel to keep the gas and diesel-powered generators it has running for 29 days, the Russian authorities said.

Only 30% of Crimea’s electricity is generated locally – the rest comes from Ukraine, Russia’s government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.