Crimea Power Lines Are Blown Up, Cutting Off Electricity

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Crimea Power Lines Are Blown Up, Cutting Off Electricity

Power Lines to Crimea Are Blown Up, Cutting Off Electricity



Saboteurs blew up the main power lines leading into Crimea early Sunday, plunging the disputed peninsula into darkness overnight and prompting the Russian government to impose a state of emergency there.



The more than 1.8 million residents of the peninsula lacked electricity, Russian news agencies reported, although backup generators were being used to provide power to hospitals and for other vital purposes.



Unknown assailants, but presumably Ukrainian nationalists, knocked out all four of the main electricity lines running through the Kherson region of Ukraine, the reports said. The first two were heavily damaged on Friday, and the second two were blown up on Sunday shortly after midnight, the reports said.



Reports in Ukraine said that the police had clashed with activists from the right-wing nationalist Right Sector movement in the area on Saturday after the initial damage. Ukraine still claims the peninsula.



When the first two lines were shut down on Friday, Crimea’s ministry of fuel and energy warned residents that disruptions in the power supply were possible and suggested that they stock up on batteries, water and other essentials.



Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, but some of the main utilities, including electricity, still run from the Ukrainian mainland. Russia plans to replace them with power lines coming from the Russian mainland instead, but those are not yet complete.



The authorities in the Russian naval port of Sebastopol were using diesel generators and gas turbines to supply power to different neighborhoods on a rotating basis, the Tass news agency reported. The destroyed lines to all of Crimea were expected to be at least partially restored later Sunday, the Russian reports said.



Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine provoked the worst crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, with the West imposing economic sanctions.