“There are different options” to retaliate, he said.
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Our correspondent Maria Korenyuk said: “Moscow claims its working hard to speed up the construction of an energy bridge along the bottom of the Kerch Strait to Crimea. We could, and maybe in this situation we need to, take a decision about halting deliveries of coal by our commercial organizations which deliver coal to Ukrainian power stations”.
Crimean Tatar activists accuse Russian Federation of abusing Tatar rights and denying them a voice since a pro-Moscow government was installed in Crimea.
“If they (the Ukrainian side) resume the supplies, we will be grateful for that”.
Tatars, a Muslim people with a long history in Crimea, who opposed Russia’s annexation in March 2014, had already imposed an informal economic blockade on the supply of goods to Crimea by setting up road blocks to the area in September.
Kiev has also threatened a tit-for-tat ban on food imports from Russian Federation in a dispute connected to a free trade agreement between Kiev and the European Union that is set to come into force from January, while the interior minister has suggested cutting off power to Crimea totally.
The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies have backed Ukraine diplomatically and have denounced what they see as Russia’s intervention to support the rebels and prolong the destabilizing conflict.
Electricity supplies from Ukraine to Crimea have been entirely shut off after the region’s two remaining power pylons were blown up. Mr. Djemilev said the Tatars’ demands also included investigations into a spate of deaths and kidnappings in the Tatar community, as well as the right for top Tatar leaders to visit and live in Crimea. The countries banned landings by each other’s airlines in October.
Yesterday pro-Tartar and right-wing activists prevented engineering teams from repairing the downed pylons.
With own power plants, gas turbines and diesel generators supplying at least in major cities had been restored partly, scissors met told TASS according to the Agency. “Anyone who harms our citizens will be punished”.
Almost 1.9 million people were left partly or fully without electricity.
Russia’s state-controlled gas company, Gazprom, said Wednesday that it stopped sending gas to Ukraine on Wednesday morning and will supply no more because Ukraine has not paid in advance for more deliveries.
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Sergei V. Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed prime minister of the Crimean Republic, was more exercised, calling the power cutoff “a terrorist act” in a statement on Monday.
