Yuri Kasich, a deputy head of Ukrainian state-run energy company Ukrenergo, said Sunday night that Ukraine’s maintenance crews were ready to restore electricity supply to Crimea within four days if they are granted access to the site where the damaged power lines are located.
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The attack, if by Ukrainian nationalists opposed to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine previous year, is likely to further increase tensions between Russian Federation and Ukraine.
After its accession into the Russian Federation a year ago, Russia foresaw the danger of having Crimea dependent on Ukraine for electricity, and has been in the process of laying underwater cables from the Russian mainland.
It’s a vulnerability that someone took advantage of over the weekend by bombing electric transmission towers in Ukraine that serve Crimea.
Ilya Kiva, a senior officer in the Ukrainian police who was at the scene, said on his Facebook page that the pylons had been “blown up”, as did the Kherson region administration.
It was not immediately clear who destroyed the main electric pylons on Friday and Sunday, but the blasted away stump of at least one near the demonstrators was wrapped in the distinctive Crimean Tatar flag, blue with a yellow trident in the upper left-hand corner.
The activists deny they blew up the pylons, which also triggered blackouts in parts of Ukraine’s Kherson.
Washington has made repeated pledges of support for Ukraine, and has committed more than $265 million in training and equipment since 2014, Davis said.
Ukrainian police and journalists simultaneously posted social media reports of explosions in Chaplinka in the Kherson region, where power transmission towers supporting the lines delivering energy to Crimea are located.
Russian Federation has blamed Ukrainian nationalists and Crimean Tatar activists for the pylon damage, calling it “an act of terrorism”.
The Russian energy minister accused Kiev of failing to take measures to fix the power lines. “This is an absolutely groundless assertion and the quick reaction of the government regarding repairs on the power lines and its guaranteeing of security for people in the emergency zone is proof of this”, it said in emailed comments. Local news agencies reported interruptions in phone reception and Internet connection and restrictions on gasoline sales.
Crimea announced a day off for nongovernment workers on Monday and shut down public services that use a lot of electricity, like the trolley-bus service in the port city of Sevastopol, replacing them with regular buses on some routes.
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Crimean authorities said they had managed to partially reconnect some cities using generators.
