Halya Coynash: Putin’s Crimean ‘genocide’
Russian-occupied Crimea is without Ukrainian electricity and is likely to remain so until Russia’s occupation ends. It will also not receive goods from mainland Ukraine, and probably not water either. Attempts by Crimea’s parliament to call this “genocide’ and demand urgent consideration of the issue by the UN Security Council run up against insurmountable problems, and not only Russia’s internationally condemned annexation of Crimea. Despite the Kremlin’s attempts to claim that Crimea was always Russian, the peninsula is heavily dependent on mainland Ukraine’s electricity, water and other infrastructure. It is also not Ukraine that refused to provide Crimea with electricity, but Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.