Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine is prepared to
restore electricity to Crimea after more than a month of severe outages,
but only if the peninsula annexed by Russia rejoins Ukraine.
“We are ready to supply electricity to Crimea that is Ukrainian. You
can have it if you want. If not, we’ll wait until Ukrainian sovereignty
over Crimea is restored,” Poroshenko said.
Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in March last year, has
suffered repeated power cuts since the annexation, underlining its
reliance on Ukraine for electricity and fuelling a downwards spiral in
relations between Moscow and Kiev.
Russia has refused to go along with Ukraine’s conditions for renewing
a contract that expired on January 1 to provide Crimea with
electricity.
Poroshenko said Ukraine is prepared to “assure supplies of
electricity,” but the contract must stipulate that Crimea is an
“autonomous republic” of Ukraine.
He insisted that Kyiv is doing what it can to “prevent more
complications in the lives” of Crimeans, but pointed out that Crimean
leaders themselves had declined to renew the power contract.
Residents of the peninsula have been experiencing chronic power
shortages since the main lines carrying power from Ukraine were blown up
on November 22.
A partial restoration of electricity during December came to a
complete halt after another attack on the power facilities on December
30.
In a parallel development, Ukrainian state energy firm Naftogaz has
agreed to buy 1.7 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from European
suppliers at a price of $188-$211 per thousand cubic metres, the company
said in a statement on Thursday.
Ukraine, which is still in a protracted gas pricing dispute with
Russia, has been seeking to cover its needs with its own production and
supplies from Europe.
Ukraine has said it has enough gas to safeguard supplies over the winter and ensure stable transit of Russian gas to Europe.
http://neurope.eu/article/poroshenko-no-electricity-for-crimea-until-it-rejoins-ukraine/