Reuters: Ukraine leaves sabotaged power lines to Russian-annexed Crimea in mud
Five days after saboteurs blew up power lines in southern Ukraine plunging Russian-annexed Crimea into an energy crisis, all four damaged pylons are out of action and engineers say they need a political decision to restore supplies.
The stalemate has left some 2 million Crimeans reliant upon emergency generators and has caused severe disruption, exposing how dependent Crimea remains on Ukraine a year and a half after it broke away to join Russia.
Some limited repair work has taken place, say Ukrainian government and energy officials, who have spoken of how the problem could - technically - be fixed relatively swiftly.
But on Friday the damaged pylons lay flat in thick mud as the wind whipped across the flat featureless landscape.
Update #1: Still no power in Crimea as protesters block repairs to pylons (Euronews)
Update #2: Crimea waits for Russia to lay electric lifeline under sea (TASS)
WNU Editor: My advice to those who are living in Crimea is to not hope that Kiev will order and enforce repairs on the grid. There is no political will in Ukraine to do this, and even if there was, those who blew up the pylons will only blow them up again. Russia is now prioritizing laying down undersea electric cables to the peninsula, and while I know that they were hoping that the "land-bridge" between Russia and Crimea would be finished by now and that electricity will be distributed this way .... it is going to take time.
Talk about winning hearts and minds. I can also imagine that whatever the people living in Crimea thought about returning to Ukraine before, they are much less interested in that now.
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