State of emergency in Crimea after power lines blown up
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said in a statement that four power lines had been damaged and that two districts of Ukraine’s Kherson region were also left without power.
“This is not about the pylons that were destroyed, it is about our position”, Mr Avakov said, calling for a move that would effectively endorse an unofficial blockade of the Russian-controlled region. According to Russian state news agency Itar-Tass, over 1.1 million people on the peninsula remain without electricity.
Though Russia is preparing undersea cables to deliver power to the Crimean peninsula, Ukraine still provides Crimea with its electricity.
While it is not immediately clear who damaged the pylons, Crimean Tatar activists have been blocking engineers from making repairs, Radio Free Europe reports.
Yesterday, Crimea declared a state of emergency after its main electricity lines from Ukraine were blown up by unknown attackers, leaving the Russian-annexed peninsula in darkness after the second such attack in as many days.
There’s no word on who was responsible for Sunday’s explosions that brought down power pylons that serve Crimea from the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, but evidently their work isn’t done. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk asked his cabinet to formalize the decree by drafting a law that would “take into account the interests of our brotherly Crimean Tatar people”.
On November 20, supplies of electric power to the Crimea from Ukraine fell by 50 percent after saboteurs blew up power lines to the peninsula. “So far there are no hypotheses, the investigators are working”, Ukrainian interior ministry spokeswoman Nataliya Stativko told AFP.
MOSCOW/KYIV, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday it would cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and threatened to halt coal deliveries, ratcheting up a dispute over a power blackout in Crimea at a time when a ceasefire between Kyiv and separatist rebels is fraying.
The Ukrainian government responded Monday by imposing a temporary ban on trucks ferrying goods to and from Crimea.
Dozens of Crimean Tatars gathered later in Kyiv at the presidential administration building to protest against police efforts to undermine what the demonstrators called their “blockade” of Crimea.
Most of the electricity used in Crimea still comes from Ukraine even after Russian Federation annexed it in March 2014. For now, we will hold off on any retaliatory measures, but we hope Ukrainian authorities will use their power and put new pylons in place.
“This was all done with the tacit consent of the country’s whole leadership”, said a lawmaker close to the circle of Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, referring to the Crimea blackout.
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