Interior minister: Too dangerous to repair damaged power towers:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- The Ukrainian Interior Minister says just one of the four damaged transmission towers carrying electricity to Crimea can be repaired at the moment.
Arsen Avakov told an emergency cabinet meeting on November 23 that the possible presence of mines and the threat of "subversive attacks" made repair work impossible.
Some 1.5 million residents of Crimea have been without power after four electricity transmission towers were blown up in Ukraine's Kherson region near the peninsula on November 21.
Groups of Crimean Tatar activists have reportedly been preventing engineers from reaching the sites to carry out repairs.
The veteran leader of the Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev, said on November 22 that talks on resuming electricity supply from Ukraine to Crimea would be possible only after "all Ukrainian citizens jailed in Russia in politically motivated cases" were freed and a commission to investigate killings and disappearances of the Crimean Tatars was created.
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, sparking an international outcry and Western sanctions against Moscow.
Ukrainian activists fought with security forces, preventing repairs being made to electricity transmission towers which were blown up at the weekend. Russian-annexed Crimea has been cut off from Ukrainian electricity supplies as a result of the damage. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
