Russian Federation annexed Crimea from Ukraine past year, and the territory still receives 85% of its water and 80% of its electricity from mainland Ukraine.
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The pylons brought electricity from Ukraine.
The incident comes more than two months after exiled Crimean Tatars – an ethnic, minority group native to the region – began blocking an important trade road between Ukraine and Crimea in a protest against discrimination and continued Russian rule.
“All of these events have led to an additional emergency shutdown of the electrical network of two units at thermal power plants – the Dnieper and Uglegorskaya – and the emergency unloading by 500 MW of nuclear power plants in Ukraine”.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry has declared a state of emergency in Crimea until power is fully restored, news agency RIA reported.
“When this can happen depends on the results of talks, which the instigators of the blockade are carrying out with authorities”, he said in a statement posted on the website of the administration of Kherson region, which neighbours Crimea.
“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 group, in which Crimean Tatar activists play a prominent role, denied it was responsible for either the attacks on Friday or last night when contacted today.
Two of the four transmission towers in Kherson, Ukraine, were damaged on Friday. At least three cities in the region are running on emergency local generators, according to the BRC news agency.
On Saturday, the pylons were the scene of violent clashes between activists from the Right Sector nationalist movement and paramilitary police, Ukrainian media reported.
Russian Federation did not immediately announce retaliatory measures following the ban on commercial traffic to Crimea.
Ukrainian authorities said that activists blocked the site when they tried to fix the damaged pylons. The peninsula needs an estimated power supply of 480 megawatt.
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All Crimean medical facilities are connected to backup power supplies and their operations will not be affected, Crimea’s first vice premier, Mikhail Sheremet, told journalists.
