Russia has decided to
stop commercial electricity deliveries to Ukraine, a Russian Energy Ministry
source told Russian business newspaper Kommersant on Tuesday.
The unnamed source told the newspaper that the contract on the provision of Russian energy to Ukraine which expired at the end of 2015 will not be extended into the new year. The contract was not renewed since it was linked to an agreement on Ukraine's supply of electricity to Crimea.
In 2014, Ukraine's Ukrinterenergo
signed a contract with Russia's Inter RAO on the purchase
of electricity from Russia's power grid. A contract on the
provision of supplies to Crimea via Ukraine was also signed. In
late 2015, in talks on extending the provision of Ukrainian
electricity supplies to Crimea, Ukrainian authorities insisted that Crimea
be classified as an 'integral part of Ukraine' in the contract,
a provision with which their Russian counterparts could not agree.
Moreover, beginning late last year, Crimea was subjected
to repeated power cuts. On November 21, power lines supplying energy
to Crimea via southern Ukraine were damaged. The Ukrainian Interior
Ministry later said that the power lines were blown up by Tatar activists
and the paramilitaries from the ultra-nationalist Right Sector
organization, who were attempting a blockade of the peninsula.
Supplies were restored in early December, when the
first leg of the Russian energy bridge stretching across the Kerch
Strait was completed, and supplies from Ukraine restored.
Then, on December 30, the peninsula's electricity
supply was once again disrupted, with authorities in Kherson
confirming that an 'explosion' had damaged an electricity pylon. The abrupt
shutoff coincided with the expiry of the contract for the supply
of electricity from the Ukrainian side.
In response to the second cut, Russian authorities
instructed a national polling institute to survey Crimeans' views
on the prospects for a new electricity contract with Ukraine.
The poll found that over 90% of residents were not willing
to see their peninsula listed as 'an integral part of Ukraine', and
were willing to risk shortages for several months until the
second leg of the Russian bridge via the Kerch Strait was completed.
Last year, Ukraine minimized its purchase
of Russian electricity, accumulating coal reserves instead. Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk declared over the weekend that the country does not
expect any blackouts.
However, Ukrainian energy analyst Dmytro Marunich told
Kommersant that while the situation in terms of the country's
electricity supply is stable, Ukraine nevertheless faces the risk
of rolling blackouts. These may occur, according to the analyst, if
temperatures fall below minus 15 degrees Celsius for more
than two weeks, if any of the country's nuclear power stations face
an emergency shutdown, or if the country sees any disruptions in the
supply of coal from the war-torn Donbass region due to a
deterioration of the security situation there.
Source: Sputnik News 12-01-2016
