Russia and Ukraine negotiate guaranteed energy supplies to Crimea

By the end of this year, Russia and Ukraine may come to terms on guaranteed electric power supplies to Crimea, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told Russia 24 TV on Thursday.

“As soon as we sign a contract and start supplying electric power from Russia to Ukraine’s energy system, the situation will improve in both Ukraine and Crimea,” Kozak said.

He said that stable energy supplies to Crimea are one of the requirements of this contract and added that the contract may take force next week.

As EAD reported earlier, on Wednesday, Crimea was deenergized for a few hours. Crimean President Sergey Aksenov said that Ukraine’s action was a hostile act of sabotage. Crimea was forced to apply a regime of rotating outages on Dec 24, when it started receiving just 400MW (40% of what it needs). As of 8:00 PM on Wednesday, almost 740,000 Crimeans had no electricity, but socially significant facilities were not deenergized.

On Thursday, the thermal power plants in Simferopol and Saki failed, leaving the republic with just 300MW-320MW of own generation against general 400MW. This may result in new rotating outages.