Why Ukraine supplies electricity to Crimea
Mr. Novak also said gas supplies to Ukraine would be cut off on Tuesday and Wednesday because Kyiv had not made an advance payment. The prime minister’s spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment. Crimean authorities said they had managed to partially reconnect the cities of Simferopol, Yalta and Saky using generators, the BBC reported. “Crimea is Ukrainian territory”.
Moscow and Kyiv appeared to lurch towards a fresh trade war on Monday, as Ukraine suspended supplies of food and other commercial goods to Crimea and a senior minister suggested permanently cutting the peninsular off from electricity supplies.
The dispute lays bare the simmering conflict between Ukraine and Russian Federation, which authorities in Kyiv accuse of stoking an nearly two-year-long separatist war that’s hammered the former Soviet state’s economy and killed more than 8,000 people. Crimea now draws at least 70% of its electricity from Ukraine.
Supporters of the Crimean energy blockade are continuing to prevent police and fix crew access to the damaged electrical facilities.
“Negotiations regarding the resumption of electricity deliveries [to Crimea] are possible after our political prisoners are freed”, he said in an interview with the online news portal Liga. It has also forced the closure of some 150 schools.
On Monday, President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine would temporarily suspend freight traffic to the peninsula, which depends on rail and truck shipments from Ukraine for most of its food and other essentials. The ministry didn’t say who was suspected.
“Russian troops in occupied Crimea have significantly increased their offensive capabilities with well-trained units (who are) ready to launch attacks”, the NSDC reports. “Local generators are supplying the peninsula with 30% of its electricity”.
Crimean Fuel and Energy Minister Sergei Yegorov said: “This morning, maximum consumption in the Crimean federal district is about 800 MW at such air temperatures”.
“What is happening on the Crimean border is not so much pressure on Russian Federation as a demonstration that we are prepared to respond strongly to events in the east and in Crimea”, the lawmaker added.
Russia’sEmergency Situations Ministry said it was rotating power supplies across the peninsula. Power lines run past Russian checkpoints into Russian-controlled territory.
In August, Russia began laying a power cable along the bed of the Kerch strait, which separates Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula from the Taman Peninsula in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
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