Kiev bans delivery of goods to Crimea, fails to fix power lines

Ukraine has ramped up pressure on Russia by banning goods deliveries to Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow last year, and by failing to restore power after electricity pylons were blown up.

Ukraine's prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, also declared his government would respond in kind to any trade embargoes imposed by Russia, which has threatened to ban food imports from Ukraine at the start of next year. That is when Kiev hopes a landmark trade deal with the EU will come into effect, marking a major step in Ukraine's bid to break out of Russia's orbit. It sparked a revolution and Moscow-backed insurgency in eastern regions.

Anti-tank mines

Much of Crimea continued to be without power yesterday, three days after pylons carrying electricity to the peninsula were brought down in southern Ukraine, by what investigators suspect were anti-tank mines.

Crimean Tatar activists and members of Ukrainian volunteer battalions that have fought in the east have manned roadblocks into Crimea since September, to put pressure on Russia and its puppet rulers in the region.

The peninsula, home to about two million, has no land link with Russia and relies on Ukraine for most of its power, water and other supplies.

Crimean Tatar activists say they want to raise awareness of mounting oppression in their homeland, from where they were deported to Central Asia by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1944; most Tatars opposed annexation by Russia 70 years later.

Rights violations

“There can’t be a free economic zone in territories where bandits rule and where human rights are crudely violated,” said Ukrainian deputy and Crimean Tatar leader

Mustafa Dzhemilev

, who was jailed during the Soviet period. Talks on restoring power to Crimea could start only after “political prisoners” in the region were freed, Mr Dzhemilev added, as Ukraine’s power firm reported activists were preventing its workers from fixing the pylons.

Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, urged the government yesterday to suspend cargo traffic with Crimea, saying it should "define the model for Ukraine's future relations with the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea".

Shortly after, the government announced goods deliveries had been halted. The trade dispute comes amid intensified fighting in parts of eastern Ukraine.