Electric power supplies to the Crimea were interrupted as a result of subversive activities, when supports of electric power lines were demolished in the south of Ukraine.
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Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yatsenyuk for his part said that Kiev would respond to any ban from Russian Federation with a retaliatory measure.
“We are not satisfied with today’s status quo, when an occupying power neglects the basic rights of the Crimean Tatar people”, said President Petro Poroshenko after a meeting with three European foreign ministers.
Two of the four transmission towers in Kherson, Ukraine, were damaged on Friday.
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.
After denouncing Moscow for allegedly instigating the worst worldwide crisis since World War II and threatening to destroy the “liberal worldwide order”, former Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky called for “more proactive sanctions” aimed at crippling Russia’s energy sector, along with a “larger USA presence” in Ukraine. Ukrainian activists calling for an economic blockade of the Black Sea peninsula tried to prevent fix works on Saturday, but retreated after clashes with police.
Ukraine on Monday halted the movement of goods to Crimea, ratcheting up tensions with Moscow amid a relative lull in fighting in separatist eastern Ukraine that has claimed more than 8,000 lives since April 2014.
Only 30% of Crimea’s electricity is generated locally – the rest comes from Ukraine, Russia’s government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.
“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. The pylons from Ukraine have reportedly blown up plunging Crimea, annexed by Russian Federation from Kiev, into darkness.
The peninsula has 29 days of stocks but officials promised rationing of electricity to preserve supplies. Crimea depends on power lines and towers in Ukraine for 70 percent of its power.
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.
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“Crimeans will not be brought to their knees … or spoken to in the language of blackmail”, he was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency on Sunday.
