Weekend sabotage of the power lines leading from Ukraine into the Crimean Peninsula is only expected to take 3-4 days to repair, according to engineers familiar with the situation, but that is only once they are able to get access to the site of the pylons destroyed in Ukrainian Kherson.
The pylons were blown up by some as-yet-unknown faction, and Ukrainian ultra nationalists are out in force, preventing repair crews from reaching the site to try to effect repairs. This means the peninsula will be without electricity for the foreseeable future.
After its accession into the Russian Federation last year, Russia foresaw the danger of having Crimea dependent on Ukraine for electricity, and has been in the process of laying underwater cables from the Russian mainland. Those cables, however, won’t be ready to power the peninsula until 2020 by most estimates.
To make matters worse for the Crimeans, Ukrainian Premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk imposed a “temporary ban” on all cargo entering the peninsula by land. This effectively forces Crimea to rely purely on shipments by sea for basic goods.
Russian officials have blasted the attack on Crimea’s power supply as “terrorism,” and say they believe the nationalist groups blocking the repairs are likely the ones who blew up the pylons in the first place.
According to the Ukrainians, cutting off Crimea from electricity and trade goods is supposed to make the Crimeans pine for the good ole days of being part of Ukraine. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.
According to both articles linked to, both Ukrainian nationalists and Crimean Tatars have been obstructing repair crews, which I'm sure is breaking nobody's heart in Ukraine! This situation is one of the reasons why I call Crimea a white elephant. Without electricity, nothing works. No light, no heat, no trains, no radio, no TV, no telephone, no internet. Only those with emergency generators have any power at all and that takes quite a bit of oil. After all the big talk when Crimea was annexed, we're now told that Crimea will depend on Ukrainian electricity until 2020 at least. A not a word about about building a bridge over the Kerch Strait, a much more difficult task than accross a river. With Putin ever more bogged down in Syria, it was inevitable that Ukraine would seize the window of opportunity to try to get its territory back. The dael has always been on the table: abandon Donetsk/Lugansk and negotiate over Crimea (Russia could buy it, for example, the way the US bought Alaska). The problem is that Putin wants it all. He wants what he's got in Ukraine, and probably much more besides, not necessarily just in Ukraine, and he wants Assad. As Frederick the Great once said, he who would defend everything, defends nothing.
Right on cue!
Cool timing, eh?
Blow up stuff, blocade transports, down a Russian plane along the Syrian border, tell Hollande to be a good doggie. All within a couple of days.
Looks like there was some danger of re-approachment between Europe and Russia. Can't have that.
Neocon nutcases never sleep.
Where is Michael Kenny to spin this one and blame it on Putin?
My, the US backed terrorists sure are out in force around the world today!
Someday someone is going to cut the power grid in America, and then the enemy from within will destroy the country without Putin having to even launch one rocket.