Last week Crimea was completely de-energized due to the undermining of power transmission line supports, which supply electricity from Ukraine. Electricity supplies to the peninsula from Ukraine completely ceased; Crimea and Sevastopol introduced an emergency regime; emergency outages were scheduled; the head of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, suspended the Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy of the republic, Yevgeny Demin, from his post.
Meanwhile, as the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova,explained, “in the early hours of November 22 alleged “unidentified persons” in the Kherson region of Ukraine blew up the power transmission lines that supply electricity to Crimea based on a Russian-Ukrainian contract. The resulting power shortage led to rolling power cuts. As is known, many social and commercial facilities were left without electricity.”
Hot on the heels of that event, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk seems to have demanded that the destroyed infrastructure be immediately restored and then, on President Poroshenko’s instructions, rushed through a government resolution on a temporary ban on cargo transport to and from Crimea, as demanded by the extremists as well as members of the nationalist Right Sector, who are blocking food supplies on the border with Crimea.
“In effect, official Kiev has let itself be led by pro-extremist people who were engaging in undisguised blackmail. It has to be said that these people do not represent the opinion of the majority, on the contrary, they form an aggressive minority of Ukrainian society. Unfortunately, the country’s leadership has allowed itself to be drawn into another dangerous policy that brings suffering to ordinary Ukrainians who will have to pay the price. History shows that the language of threats, blockades and pressure has never benefited anyone and has never brought the desired results,” she stated.
It also focused attention on the fact that “the self-proclaimed leaders of the Crimean Tatar people – I stress, “self-proclaimed” – who previously were urging the Kiev authorities to cut power supplies to the peninsula, are now at pains to deny responsibility for the crime since, I repeat, it can only be described as extremist and terrorist.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry considers the incident to be “a tragic illustration of the state of the current Kiev regime, its capacity (or otherwise) to take decisions on humanitarian matters that affect the interests of the people.”
“One has the feeling that Ukraine has lost state power and that the people in Kiev are not in control of the situation in the country and simply do not know what they are doing. The government is totally dysfunctional. Of course, when we hear these same people speak about alleged human rights violations in Crimea, we want to ask them: does anything that has happened so far meet any humanitarian standards?” Zakharov asked rhetorically.