Ukraine halts trade with Crimea

“On November 22, at 00:25am (2225 GMT) there was a switch-off of electricity coming into Crimea from Ukraine”, the Crimean branch of Russia’s emergency situations ministry said in a statement.

The cables were probably damaged by antitank mines, Kherson Governor Andriy Putilov on Friday. They are calling for a full economic and energy blockade.

Crimean Tatar activists suggested that the weakened pylons were blown down by the wind.

In the port city of Sevastopol, electricity was cut off completely at 2:00 am, although different districts have since had brief rolling periods of power, an AFP journalist reported.

Video shown by the ATR network, a Tatar television station now operating in Ukraine after its main channel in Crimea was forced to close, showed Tatar activists tackling the special Ukrainian police units trying to gain access for fix crews.

Poroshenko said Ukraine needs to coordinate with its worldwide partners to secure the liberation of arrested activists, restore the broadcasting of Crimean media, and allow Crimean Tatar leaders to return to their homes. According to the Financial Times, an unspecified “advisory group” has recommended that Crimean authorities treat the incident as a “terror act”.

Davis noted that as of 2014, Washington has spent $265 million in order to train and equip Ukrainian forces with armored Humvees, body armor, counter-mortar radar, night vision goggles and medical equipment.

There were several signs in recent weeks that a further escalation in Ukraine was being prepared.

“Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including Crimean Tatars, are facing brutal pressure from the Russian authorities right now”, the president said.

The imperialist-backed Kiev regime is preparing to implement a European Union (EU) “free trade” agreement that will place the Ukrainian economy and the living standards of the Ukrainian masses fully at the mercy of United States and European capital. Write to us in the Comments Section or comment on our Facebook page.

The U.S. government’s policies regarding the conflict in eastern Ukraine might lead to a third world war, an American political analyst says. “We certainly take into account possibility or worse outcome”.

“Unfortunately, we must inform our residents that, most likely, this period will stretch on for a while”, Sergey Askyonov, the Crimean leader said. “There’s a lot of discontent in Ukrainian society”, including unhappiness with economic reforms and dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of relations with Russian Federation, he said.