Video footage from a Tatar TV station posted on YouTube showed a group of activists clashing with members of Ukraine’s national guard who attempted to seal the area around a few of the damaged power lines on Saturday.
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On the ground, fighting between U.S. and Russian-backed forces has flared in recent weeks, as Washington intensified its efforts to build up Ukrainian military and paramilitary formations as anti-Russian proxy forces, including nationalist and far-right paramiltiaries such as the Right Sector and Tatar militias, which reports implicated in the Crimean bombings. Explosions downed two lines and damaged the other two.
Crimea receives 85% of its water and 80% of its electricity from mainland Ukraine.
Ukrainian police said it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the explosions on Saturday night, but Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian nationalists are high on the list of suspects.
Engineers began laying undersea cables from southern Russian Federation to Crimea earlier this year to allow the contested territory, which is home to approximately 2 million people, to draw all its power from Russian Federation by 2020.
Ukraine’s main exports to Crimea are paintwork materials, dairy products, liquor, alcohol-free beverages and confectionary, while the peninsula exports chemicals, paintwork materials and various types of equipment to Ukraine.
But for now, the peninsula which Russia seized past year depends on Ukraine for at least 70 percent of its electricity and the first phase of the Russian project, which will ease dependence on Ukraine, is not due to come online until next month.
“Each Russian decision to impose an embargo against Ukraine will have an analogous Ukrainian decision about the introduction of an embargo against Russia”, Yatsenyuk said in a television appearance.
“I think Ukraine isn’t looking for (the attackers)”. “We want to end the occupation of Crimea”, said Refat Chubarov, one of the leaders of the community.
His annexation of the peninsula led to a severe breakdown of relations with the West, which has demanded Putin should hand back the territory to Ukraine.
The head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, declared today a non-working day because of the emergency situation in the republic.
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Russia’s Ministry of Energy announced extra gasoline and diesel fuel would be delivered to Crimea over the power supply crisis, RIA Novosti reported. In the eastern Crimean town of Kerch, local news media reported, staff at a local boarding school had to cook food for children over an open fire. These are incomplete, although Russia plans to restore them with power lines coming from the Russian mainland instead.
