Ukraine

ds. Reports on developments in Ukraine have now pushed taken a backseat and are replaced by reports on the refugee flows to Europe and by the Paris assauts. But the danger emanating from the events in Ukraine and threatening peace in Europe has not become less.

On 20 and 21 November 2015, attacks on high-voltage pylons in South Ukraine were carried out, which brought electric power to the Crimea to a near blackout. The water supply, public transport and mobile phone networks were affected. The Crimea obtains 70 to 80 per cent of their electricity from Ukraine.
It is likely that Crimean Tatars and representatives of the nationalist right sector were behind the attack on four power lines that supply the Crimea with electricity from the Ukrainian mainland. Since September they have blocked the land route to the Crimea with road blocks for trucks. It seems that Kiev has already been stopping the trains since the end of 2014, as the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” reports on 24 November and continues: Indeed “Poroshenko confirmed that criminal investigations have been initiated. A clear condemnation and distancing from the violence, which has left a large proportion of the 2.3 million Crimea inhabitants without electricity since the weekend, however, was not heard from Kiev.
Anyway, it does not seem to matter in Kiev that the Crimean Tatars together with the right sector and other radical groups in a sinister alliance are undermining the state’s monopoly on legitimate use of force by their actions. The road blockades were tolerated.”    •