Saboteurs attacked power infrastructure critical for supplying electricity to Crimea on Friday and Saturday, cutting off the peninsula main source of power and forcing authorities to implement rolling blackout and water stoppages.
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Russia’s has declared a state of emergency in Crimea until power is fully restored, news agency RIA reported. Two police officers were attacked by demonstrators near the site and a fix crew was thwarted by the demonstrators pushing for an economic blockade, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in Kiev said Sunday.
“There will be an analogous Ukrainian decision to launch an embargo against Russia to every Russian decision to launch an embargo against Ukraine”, he added.
The activists-many of them from the minority Muslim community of Crimean Tatars-have tried to blockade trucks transporting goods from mainland Ukraine to Crimea since September.
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.
In August, Russian Federation began laying a power cable along the bed of the Kerch strait, which separates Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula from the Taman Peninsula in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. That is when Kiev hopes a landmark trade deal with the European Union will come into effect, marking a major step in Ukraine’s bid to break out of Russia’s orbit.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea triggered punitive Western sanctions on Moscow, which a diplomat told Reuters on Sunday would stay in place until at least July 2016.
Russian Federation annexed Crimea in 2014, but the region is dependent on Ukraine for all its electricity. But it is unclear who exactly blew up the pylons.
But emergency power-saving measures have been imposed across the peninsula.
Russian deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said that the situation in Crimea is hard but not disastrous.
Crimean authorities said they had managed to partially reconnect the cities of Simferopol, Yalta and Saky using generators.
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Crimea relies heavily on imported power, producing only enough electricity locally to service a few 20 percent of its population. The pylons were “blown up” by an unknown party, Russian media reported, and images circulating on social media appeared to show Ukrainian flags hanging from the affected towers. Crimea retains connections to Ukraine.
