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)

http://www.rferl.org/media/video/roundup-ukraine-kherson-clashes/27381917.html

The activists of the Crimea blockade are ready to allow servicemen to repair two power transmission lines in Kherson region, Crimean Tatar leader, Ukrainian presidential envoy for Crimean Tatar People's affairs, and Ukrainian MP from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Mustafa Dzhemilev said, according to LІGA.net.

Dzhemilev meant the lines that provides electricity to some areas of Kherson region and the line leading to Zaporizhia nuclear power plant (NPP).

"We will partly allow specialists to conduct mine clearance and repair works. There's a line there that leads to several areas of Kherson region, bypassing Crimea. People have no power there. We will let the brigades restore this line. People on the mainland should not suffer. Another line leads to the Zaporizhia NPP," he said.

Dzhemilev said that negotiations on the resumption of power supply to Crimea would be possible after the release of the Ukrainian political prisoners in the occupied peninsula and in Russia.

http://www.unian.info/politics/1191000-dzhemilev-crimea-blockade-activists-ready-to-allow-repair-of-two-transmission-lines.html

In an eerie reminder of a possible nuclear catastrophe, a senior Ukrainian energy official revealed that the attack on transmission towers that cut off the delivery of electricity from Ukraine to Crimea also created an emergency situation at nuclear power plants.

The apparent act of sabotage in Ukraine’s Kherson region forced an emergency power unloading at several Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which can be extremely dangerous, according to the first deputy director of Ukraine’s energy company Ukrenergo, Yuriy Katich.

Russia’s Crimea was forced to switch to autonomous reserve power after transmission towers in the adjacent Ukrainian region were blown up, causing a blackout. Meanwhile, the repairs were delayed by Right Sector and Crimean Tatar “activists” attempting to block crews from getting to the scene. None of the groups have accepted responsibility.

“All of these events have led to an additional emergency shutdown of the electrical network of two units at thermal power plants – the Dnieper and Uglegorskaya – and the emergency unloading by 500 MW of nuclear power plants in Ukraine. This includes Zaporozhskaya NPP and the South Ukrainian NPP. I want to stress that such emergency unloading of a nuclear plant – it is very dangerous,” 112. Ukraine online portal quoted Katich as saying.

https://www.rt.com/news/323060-ukraine-nuclear-plants-danger/

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday he had proposed the government discuss suspending cargo with Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russian from Ukraine last year.

"One of the priorities of the current authorities is to define the model for Ukraine's future relations with the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea," the statement said .

http://ca.reuters.com/article/idCAKBN0TC13B20151123?rpc=401

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has suggested terminating the contract for the supply of electrical power to Crimea by a National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) decision.

"I will say as a government official, not as interior minister, responding to a question of embargo on Ukrainian goods with which the Russian Federation threatened us several days ago, I think we should make a political decision at the level of the NSDC, at the level of the government to terminate the contracts for the supply of electrical power," Avakov said at an emergency session of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv on Monday.

http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/306028.html

At Kiev’s Boryspil airport, Igor, a 28-year-old Russian returning from what he calls an “excellent” trip to the Ukrainian capital, grumbles about the overnight journey he faces home.

“I don’t see why I have to fly back to Moscow via Minsk [in neighbouring Belarus],” he complains.

Behind him, Timur, a regular business traveller between Russia and Ukraine, is similarly disgruntled. “We used to pay about $50 one-way for a direct flight to St Petersburg. Now I’m paying $200 [to go via Belarus],” he says.

Flights between Ukraine and western Russian cities used to be cheap, plentiful and short — carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers a year.

Now, they have become the latest casualty of a growing trade war that began before street protests ousted Viktor Yanukovich as Ukrainian president last year — as Moscow tried to dissuade him from signing an integration deal with the EU.

Late last month, Kiev banned most Russian flights to Ukraine on the grounds that its carriers had violated national airspace by flying to Russian-annexed Crimea. The move was part of broader Ukraine-imposed sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for the still-smouldering war in breakaway eastern regions.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2795d64-8eb6-11e5-a549-b89a1dfede9b.html