Power supplies to Russia-annexed Crimea were partially restored on Dec. 8 when one out of four main power lines leading into the peninsula began transmitting electricity from mainland Ukraine.
But the instigators of the energy blockage of the
peninsula, Crimean Tatar civil activists, say they’ll shut off the power again
if their political demands to Russia aren’t met.
The Crimea blackout started on Nov. 21, when mainline
electricity pylons connecting Ukraine to Crimea were blown up. Activists then
prevented repair crews from accessing the downed lines.
Pressure from President Petro Poroshenko and Western
countries, including the United States, has since forced the Crimean Tatars to
agree to ease the power blockade, according to Mustafa Dzhemilev, the head of
the Crimean Tatar national assembly, the Mejlis.
The West was concerned that residents in Crimea were
suffering because of the blackout, Dzhemilev told the Gordon.ua news site.
However, he said the easing of the power blockade wouldn’t last into 2016 if
certain Crimean Tatar demands weren’t met.
The power outage came on top of a transport blockade
in effect since Sept. 20. Civic activists from volunteer battalions and the
nationalist Right Sector group had been instrumental in enforcing the
blockades, but they have since stopped guarding the damaged power lines and
roadblocks.
“The Crimean Tatar activists were few in number, so we
assisted them,” Right Sector spokesperson Artem Skoropadsky told the Kyiv Post.
“But they compromised with anti-Ukrainian forces without our consent, and we
can only support a full blockade of Crimea, so we left.”
Having lost its key ally on the ground, the Crimean
Tatar leadership is now counting on backing from the government instead.
Dzhemilev said that he had received assurances that Ukraine would not sign new
contract to supply power to Crimea if Russia doesn’t release “political
prisoners” and the murders and kidnappings of Crimean Tatars aren’t
investigated. The current electricity supply contract is due to expire at the
end of the month.
A United Nations report released on Dec. 9 confirmed
cases of disappearances and criticized the lack of fair trials for Crimean residents.
It also reported cases of torture and ill-treatment against defendants and
witnesses in the case against Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who was
sentenced to 20 years in jail for “setting up a terrorist group.” The verdict
handed down to Sentsov was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Russia on Nov. 24.
Furthermore the UN report voiced concerns over the
lack of freedom of expression in Crimea, where residents are “pressured,
intimidated and sanctioned for expressing views that challenge Crimea’s status
as part of the Russian Federation.”
Recently, the homes of relatives of the coordinator of
the commercial blockade of Crimea, Lenur Islyamov, have been searched by the occupying authorities.
In addition, the leader of the Mejlis, Ukrainian lawmaker Refat Chubarov, has been charged
by the Russian-installed Simferopol government for “calling for the violation
of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.” The Simferopol
government said Chubarov would be arrested should he appear on the peninsula.
He has also been informed that a five-year ban on his entering Crimea, in force
since July 2014, has been revoked.
Chubarov on Dec. 9 tabled a draft law in parliament that would, if adopted,
prohibit any supply of power to the occupied territories. Speaking in parliament, he warned that the
easing of the power blockade only was temporary.
Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn, who is
working on a new contract for power supplies to Crimea, said he had agreed to
one of Chubarov’s demands – that the contract should refer to Crimea as
Ukrainian, at least in brackets.
Energy expert Mykhailo Honchar, president of the
Kyiv-based Strategy XXI Center, said that there was no guarantee that the
government would continue to enforce the energy blockade, which civic activists
started without any formal legitimacy.
“The power supply might even be
resumed in full,” he said, but the blackout will have been a warning to the
Kremlin of what could happen if Russia resumes its military offensive in
Ukraine’s east. The blackout was “Crimean electroshock therapy for Moscow,”
Honchar said.
Moreover, Honchar saw the interests of oligarchs
trump humanitarian concerns behind the resumption of power supplies to Crimea
via a single power line. The line leads to a titanium-processing plant in
northern Crimea that is majority-owned by the Russian-connected tycoon Dmytro
Firtash.
Firtash’s Group DF had leased the Crimea Titan
plant to Russia’s Titan Investment LLC. Raw materials for the plant are
supplied from mainland Ukraine.
Honchar saw the resuming of the power supply to
the plant as an expression of gratitude to Firtash for not re-entering the
Ukrainian political scene. A return of Firtash “would have destabilized a
fragile political situation further, and the government thanked him for staying
away by supplying his enterprise with power,” Honchar told the Kyiv Post.
A former key backer of the ex-President Viktor
Yanukovych, Firtash, faced with a threat of arrest, recently abandoned his
plans to return to Ukraine from Austria, where he successfully fought
extradition to the United States on charges of bribery.
Firtash denies the charges and dismisses them as
politically motivated.
Dzhemilev justified the reconnection of that
particular power line by saying there were risks of hazardous spills from the
titanium plant. Honchar, however, said there
was no danger and suggested that the Crimean Tatar leaders might have been
misled.
Dzhemilev said he doubts Russia would restore civil
liberties in Crimea.
“That’s what we have said all along, the blockade
should be enforced by the authorities, not by us. Polls show that 80 percent of
the citizens of Ukraine support the blockade,” the exiled veteran Crimean Tatar
leader said.
Staff writer Johannes Wamberg
Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
