Energy blockade of the Crimea. Great damage to the economy and an attempt to genocide the population
The emergency situation in the Crimea, which has arisen as a result of the blockade of the peninsula, receives all new economic and legal assessments from law enforcement officers and lawmakers of the Republic of Crimea. The prosecutor of the Republic of Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya, voiced the amount of material damage suffered by the region as a result of an energy blockade. Recall that the energy blockade was organized by the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar nationalists, who organized the undermining of power transmission towers in the Kherson region of Ukraine. It was through these lines that electric power entered the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. The official Ukrainian authorities did not dare to turn off the light to the Crimea, although the actions of the radicals certainly had behind them poorly concealed support from Kiev. In any case, the security forces of Ukraine did not take real measures to stop the power block or punish those guilty of the act of sabotage, although such opportunities existed among the Kiev authorities.
Millionth damage
The amount voiced by Natalya Poklonskaya is undoubtedly preliminary. But even so, it is quite high. To date, it is 361 million rubles, whereas at the time of initiation of a criminal case on the fact of the power block it was five times smaller and amounted to 70 million rubles. The amount of damage incurred consists of reports of losses provided by the ministries of industrial policy, transport, health of the Republic of Crimea. It includes the costs associated with the efforts of these ministries to ensure the uninterrupted performance of their duties, even under power block conditions. Of course, the actual numbers of losses incurred by the Crimea are much higher. After all, the damage caused by the energy blockade to industrial enterprises, commercial organizations, and private households of the peninsula has not yet been calculated.
It should be noted that after the start of the power block, the industrial enterprises of the peninsula suspended their work and suffered huge losses. The work of industrial enterprises was suspended to ensure that the available energy resources were directed to the needs of the direct sustenance of the population of Crimea during the energy blockade. They were able to restore their activities only after some improvement in the situation with the energy supply of the peninsula, and they had to work during the night shift. After the New Year holidays, from January 11 2016, the Crimean enterprises started working again, and some of them - at night. However, if in the Crimea it will become colder, then the industrial enterprises of the peninsula will be forced to once again stop their work - electricity will be needed in the residential sector. According to preliminary estimates, the damage incurred by the industrial enterprises of the peninsula can be no less than 900 million rubles. Well, it is absolutely impossible to calculate the damage incurred by each ordinary Crimean citizen - after all, life in the conditions of the energy blockade required material expenses for the purchase of candles, kerosene, fuel for generators, and finally - brought about enormous domestic inconveniences. The system of school and preschool education in the peninsula suffered a great deal of damage, because without electricity, children could not study, attend kindergartens and nurseries, and the training and support staff could perform their professional duties. Currently, almost all educational institutions of the Crimea are provided with diesel generator sets.
How the power block began
The undermining of power transmission lines in the Kherson region was carried out in the autumn of the past 2015 year and became a link in the general “blockade of the peninsula” declared by the Crimean Tatar nationalists. First, that part of the Crimean Tatar activists, which is positioning itself as irreconcilable opponents of the reunification of the Crimea with Russia, launched a campaign on the blockade of the peninsula. In September 2015, a group of activists blocked roads leading from Ukraine to the Republic of Crimea. Prior to the blockade, trucks with food and other goods quietly moved along the roads, which the anti-Russian activists decided to put an end to. The initiator of the blockade was a people's deputy of Ukraine and the representative of the President of Ukraine on the rights of the Crimean Tatar people Mustafa Dzhemilev. Today it is Dzhemilev who is the foremost figure in the ranks of the Crimean Tatar nationalists who support the Kiev regime and oppose the inclusion of the peninsula into the Russian Federation. Mustafa Abduljemil Dzhemilev - a person known. Not only in the Crimea, but throughout the world. He is already 72 of the year and throughout his entire adult life he is a consistent Crimean Tatar nationalist. Initially, back in the 1960-ies, Dzhemilev's activities consisted in the struggle for the right to return the deported Crimean Tatars to the peninsula. At that time, the Crimean Tatars remained among the few deported peoples who did not receive the right to return from Central Asia and Kazakhstan. For this activity, Dzhemilev received the first problems with Soviet law. For less than thirty years, he was tried seven times, fifteen years he spent in prisons under various articles. The first term - one and a half years - Jemilev received in May 1966 of the year when, after being expelled from the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Reclamation Engineering, who had been drafted into the Soviet Army, he simply refused to serve it. It would seem that with such a biography and for fifteen years of “expired” years, Dzhemilev was no longer publicly known. But his “golden hour” struck at the end of 1980's, when the Soviet leadership decided to allow the Crimean Tatars to return from the places of deportation.
Dzhemilev became the most famous Crimean Tatar leader, who received great prestige among his fellow tribesmen. In 1989, he returned to the Crimea himself and settled in Bakhchisarai, and in the summer of 1991, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was elected, who headed Mustafa Dzhemilev. In this post, he remained 22 of the year - until 2013 of the year. In the post-Soviet period stories Crimea Mustafa Dzhemilev became close with the Ukrainian nationalists and began to cooperate with them, primarily in the direction of minimizing Russian influence on the peninsula. Of course, when in 2014, at a national referendum, the inhabitants of Crimea decided to join Russia, Dzhemilev was among the most zealous opponents of reunification. He began to actively exploit the national theme, appealing to the national feelings of the Crimean Tatars and trying to present the situation with the reunification of the Crimea with Russia almost as the beginning of a new era of oppression of the Crimean Tatar people. However, the practice itself showed the wrongness of such allegations. The Crimean Tatars have the same rights in the modern Republic of Crimea as other citizens. Moreover, the Crimean Tatar language was proclaimed one of the three official languages of the Republic of Crimea, along with Russian and Ukrainian. Considering that a whole number of other Turkic and Muslim peoples live in Russia, the Crimean Tatars even benefited from joining the Peninsula into the Russian state, having received the opportunity of constant and unhindered communication with their fellow believers and linguistically close peoples of Russia. In particular, one of the largest Crimean Tatar organizations, Milli Firka (People’s Party), headed by physicist Vasvi Abduraimov, advocated consolidation with other peoples of the Crimean peninsula. Abduraimov supported the entry of the peninsula into the Russian Federation, stressing that in Ukraine the Crimean Tatar people had no development prospects. In an interview published on the Milli Firka website, Vasvi Abduraimov stressed that the Crimean Tatars "were bad in Ukraine because there were no prospects for the revival of the people, and even less for its development. Ukraine was built on a single model without taking into account the specificity of the Crimea, without taking into account the interests of the indigenous people of Crimea, which is the original representative of this land with all the obligations and responsibilities arising from this. On the other hand, the interests of another Slavic part of Ukraine, the Russian part, which is also the original representative of this land, were not taken into account at all ”(www.milli-firka.org).
Nevertheless, some of the Crimean Tatar activists, having their own reasons for that, do not agree with the entry of the peninsula into Russia. They were headed by Mustafa Dzhemilev, who soon after the reunification of the Crimea with Russia announced that the Russian authorities had banned him from entering the territory of the peninsula. 26 February 2015 of the Year Dzhemilev called on the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to impose a complete blockade of the Crimea. First of all, the blockade was understood as the termination of the supply of electricity and food. Refat Abdurakhmanovich Chubarov became the closest associate of Dzhemilev. Junior colleague of Dzhemilev (he was born in 1957 year), Refat Chubarov has a more “systemic” biography - he served in the Soviet Army, studied at the institute, even when the Soviet government worked as a researcher and even director in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution and Socialist Construction in Riga. In 1994, Chubarov was elected to the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In November 2013, it was he who replaced Mustafa Dzhemilev as chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. After the outbreak of events on the Maidan, Refat Chubarov took the anti-Russian side. When Crimea made the decision on reunification with Russia, the policy was issued a warning about the inadmissibility of extremist activities. But Chubarov continued organizing actions against reunification with Russia, after which 5 July 2014 was banned from entering the Republic of Crimea for a period of 5 years. Naturally, Chubarov from the first days took an active part in the preparation of the energy blockade of the peninsula.
In September 2015, supporters of Dzhemilev and Chubarov began the blockade of access roads to the Crimea. The fact that the Ukrainian producers, the nationalists and their Kiev patrons suffered more from the food blockade seemed to care less. Petro Poroshenko said that the action is aimed at the speedy resumption of the "state sovereignty of Ukraine over the Crimea." Ukrainian nationalists, including members of the Right Sector and Aydar, Donbass and Sich volunteer battalions created with his participation, joined the Crimean Tatar activists. Law enforcement agencies of Ukraine did not block the blockade, although on the access roads to the Crimea are located the units of the special-purpose police battalion "Kherson". Fast enough, the flow of trucks from Ukraine stopped, but the Crimea almost did not feel a shortage of food - they began to be imported from the territory of Russia. Then, activists began to thoroughly inspect cars, taking food purchased from citizens for personal consumption from citizens. Then, it was not enough for the activists to blockade the automobile roads and they decided to block the railway. For this path were blocked by concrete slabs. From the very first days of the blockade, voices were heard that it was necessary to block not only food supplies, but also the power supply of the peninsula. Moreover, Dzhemilev and his colleagues saw the practical independence of the Crimea from the presence or absence of food supplies from Ukraine. Then the militants of nationalist organizations decided to move from overlapping methods to overt sabotage.
Diversion against power lines
The idea of the power blockade of Crimea was again thrown by Dzhemilev. In an interview with the Ukrainian 17 channel, Dzhemilev said that “Crimea is provided with electricity from the mainland of Ukraine somewhere around 70%. 30%, which are produced in the territory of Crimea, is quite enough to serve hospitals, schools and the population. But, of course, not enough to ensure the production of military garrisons, which, by the way, consume part of the energy. " 20 November 2015, early in the morning, the dispatchers of emergency services received a message about the emergency shutdown of the Melitopol-Dzhankoy transmission line. A minute later, the Kakhovka-Titan transmission line stopped working. Emergency brigades left for the scene, which found fallen power transmission towers on both lines. As it became known, power transmission poles were undermined by activists - the organizers of the blockade. The explosions occurred at the pylons of all four transmission lines supplying electricity to the Crimea, but two of them were not destroyed and continued to work. Due to the damage to the pylons of power transmission lines, the supply of electricity from Ukraine to the Crimea was reduced by about 30%. Two power lines covered electricity supplies of up to 650 MW of capacity with the needs of the 900-850 MW peninsula.
Ukrainian specialists moved to the scene to carry out repair work on the grounding of the blown up high-voltage line. However, activists gathered at the same place decided not to allow the line to be restored. They began to interfere with the work of electricians, after which there were clashes between activists and Ukrainian police officers who tried to disperse them. In Kiev, Petro Poroshenko met with the leaders of the Crimean Tatar nationalists Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, which described the clashes that occurred - they were called a misunderstanding. Petro Poroshenko explained to Dzhemilev and Chubarov that the police did not intend to ensure the resumption of electricity supplies to the Crimean peninsula. Their task was to provide work on grounding the line.
Consequences of power blockade for the Crimea and Ukraine
After the explosion of power lines in the Crimea, an emergency was introduced, and electricity began to flow into institutions and homes with significant interruptions. The number of disconnected consumers was about 1,6 million. The first days after the sabotage that had taken place, the Russian leadership still hoped that the actions of the activists were independent and the Ukrainian government would ensure the restoration of electricity supplies to Crimea. However, this did not happen. Moreover, the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchyshyn stated that without the consent of the Crimean Tatar activists and nationalists, the restoration of electricity supply to the peninsula will not occur. After that, it became clear that Russia should make its own efforts to restore the power supply to the Crimea. The need for further construction of power lines bypassing the Ukrainian territory was also indicated, so that such incidents would not be repeated in the future. The construction of an energy bridge between the Krasnodar Territory and the Crimean Peninsula was intensified. Already 3 December 2015 of the year launched the first line of the energy bridge to the Crimea, which made a shock impression on the Ukrainian authorities, who did not expect Russia to be able to solve the problem so quickly and hoped that with the help of the power unit it could be blackmailed and at the same time affecting the public mood in the Crimea. After the restoration of the power supply of the Crimea, Ukraine realized its powerlessness. Moreover, it suffered real damage from the cessation of electricity supplies to the peninsula. Electricity supplies to the Crimea gave the Ukrainian state about 170 million dollars a year. This is said by many experts. In particular, RIA-News Ukraine cites the opinion of the co-chairman of the Energy Strategies Fund, Dmitry Marunich, who emphasizes that “for the year, about 170 million dollars is the revenue that was planned for the current year to receive electricity supplies to Crimea, but received only a part, about 100 million. This revenue is distributed between Energoatom, Ukrinterenergo, Ukrenergo - everyone earns on it. It is clear that part of the money goes to depreciation, there are some losses in the networks, but at least VAT is paid on this, people pay. This revenue embodies a significant part of the profits of Ukrainian entities and the turnover of business entities. "Accordingly, Ukrenergo paid taxes to replenish the Ukrainian budget. Now it has lost an income item from electricity supplies to Crimea, since the process of full integration of the peninsula into the Russian energy system began. 3 December, Vladimir Putin, who participated in connecting the first stage of the energy bridge, visited Simferopol in December 2010. It is planned to complete the process of integrating Crimea into the Russian energy system by May 2015. To him. Without any doubt, this task will be solved. The beginning of the energy blockade of the Crimea has put Ukraine in a much more difficult position than she tried to put the inhabitants of the peninsula. Thus, the shipment of coal from the territories of the DPR and the LPR was stopped. so many - they are practically ending, and this is the next problem after the losses incurred by the country's budget, having lost revenues from the sale of electricity to the Crimea. Who will return the damage to the Ukrainian business is also unclear. Indeed, in Europe, where modern Ukraine is striving so vainly, great attention is paid to protecting the interests of entrepreneurs. And if, due to state necessity, a business suffers losses, then the state compensates these losses. But in this situation, it is very doubtful that the Kiev authorities will be able, and they deem it necessary, to compensate Ukrainian businessmen for the losses they have suffered.
It is noteworthy that the emergency situation around the power blockade of the Crimea had some positive consequences for innovative developments. Thus, on the landfill in the village of Turgenevo, Belogorsky District of the Republic of Crimea, electricity generation from landfill gas was started. The project to create a biogas station is the first in the Russian Federation. Now the biogas station produces 60 kW / h. It is planned in the near future to equip the entire territory of the biogas station with gas exhaust wells, which will increase energy production to 0.4-0.5 MW of electricity per hour. At the biogas station, an engine of Russian production YMZ-238 is used. Given the difficult situation with the energy supply of the Crimea, the development of such projects can play a very important role. Scientists in November 2015 reported on the project to the leadership of the Crimea and received its support.
Criminal cases and genocide charges
Meanwhile, in her speech, which we talked about at the beginning of the article, Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya stressed that a criminal case had been initiated into the fact of undermining the power transmission lines in the Kherson region of Ukraine. As the accused (in absentia), the second, besides Mustafa Dzhemilev, is the leader of the Crimean Tatar nationalists and one of the organizers of the blockade of the peninsula, entrepreneur Lenur Islyamov. Fifty-year-old Lenur Edemovich Islyamov, like most of his compatriots, was born in Central Asia - it was there that the Soviet government deported Crimean Tatars from the Crimea. He graduated from the dental faculty of the Tashkent Medical Institute, but Perestroika broke out and young Lenur preferred the more adventurous and interesting way of a businessman to the career of a dentist. For more than twenty years of entrepreneurial activity, he has proved himself to be a talented and successful businessman, having created about twenty companies in Russia. By the way, Lenur Islyamov all the time of the post-Soviet Ukrainian statehood retained Russian citizenship. Unlike Mustafa Dzhemilev, Islyamov at first did not commit anti-Russian attacks and even supported the reunification of the Crimea with the Russian Federation. From 2 April to 28 in May 2014, he served on the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea under the leadership of Sergey Aksenov and served as deputy prime minister. Islyamov met with Vladimir Putin several times and was one of the initiators of concluding an agreement on cooperation between the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and the government of Aksyonov. However, later, Islyamov had a conflict with the republic’s higher leadership, after which he resigned.
After his dismissal from the government of Crimea, Lenur Islyamov moved to Kiev, changed Russian citizenship to Ukrainian, and immediately changed his views from pro-Russian to anti-Russian. In the autumn of 2015, we saw Lenura Islyamova among the most active organizers of the blockade of the Crimean Peninsula. 21 December 2015 of the year Islyamov was charged in absentia for committing sabotage (meaning involvement in organizing a power block of the Crimea). Later it was also announced that the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office might initiate another criminal case against the entrepreneur - under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "The organization of an illegal armed formation or participation in it," as Lenura Islyamova may be considered involved in the creation of troops that participated in the blockade.
Thus, yesterday's supporter of integration with Russia turned into a defendant in a criminal case. The court decided to arrest the property of Lenur Islyamov, and the entrepreneur himself was given a measure of restraint in absentia. Interesting evidence of Islyamov’s involvement in the organization of the power block was obtained by Russian prankers Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus. Young people called Islyamov, posing as Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov and Verkhovna Rada deputy Anton Gerashchenko. The politician who believed them said that one of the fighters of the Donbass battalion named Enver Kutya carried out the undermining of the pylons in the Kherson region. The prankers spread the information that on November 11 a Ukrainian citizen Kutia was stopped by Ukrainian law enforcement officers, who was about to enter the territory of the Kherson region. With him there were six minutes and two RPGs. But soon the police released him (obviously, not without an order from above), and the fighter drove to the Kherson region, where he sabotaged against the power lines.
In early January, 2016, it became known that the Crimean Parliament was asking for an investigation into the actions of the Ukrainian authorities during the food and energy blockade of the region. According to parliamentarians, as a result of the blockade, thousands of ordinary Crimean people (who, incidentally, have nothing to do with politics) were forced to live with schedules for the constant switching off of light. The actions of the Kiev leadership were called by the Crimean parliamentarians only as an attempt to genocide the population of the peninsula. Deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Crimea made an official appeal to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and the Investigative Committee of Russia with a request to investigate the genocide against the population of the Crimean Peninsula by the government of Ukraine. The appeal of the Crimean State Council states: “The blockade of the Republic of Crimea, led by the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Mustafa Dzhemilev, Refat Chubarov, as well as a group of people actually operating under the control of the authorities of Ukraine, under the leadership of Lenur Islyamov has been going on for more than four months. This is reflected in the daily reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and is a vivid example of the most flagrant violation of human rights, hate crimes, genocide, which are detrimental to the civilian population of Crimea. ” The parliamentarians stressed that the power outages created special obstacles for health care institutions, which are under constant control of the artificial respiration, lung ventilation, life support capsules for newborns, operating rooms, equipment for maternity hospitals and intensive care units. Thus, a direct threat was created to the life and health of people, including sick people, old people and children being treated in health care facilities in the Crimea.
Deputies of the Crimean parliament noted that Kiev is directly responsible for the fact that criminal groups were created that organized sabotage on power lines. In addition, the Crimean parliamentarians asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation to assist in initiating proceedings for the recognition of genocide against the population of Crimea by the Ukrainian authorities in international organizations - the General Assembly and the UN Security Council, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States , Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “We are convinced that the terrorists and their accomplices, who encroached on the life and health of the civilian population of the Crimean Federal District, cannot escape responsibility. This crime does not have a statute of limitations, and sooner or later the perpetrators must suffer deserved punishment, ”reads the appeal of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea.
Meanwhile, Russian politicians have already given their assessment of the appeals of the republican parliamentarians. It should be noted that as early as the beginning of December of the past 2015, the head of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev, called the policy of the power blockade of the Crimean peninsula just as a genocide, the policy of the blockade of the Crimean peninsula. The prime minister stressed that “whatever the Ukrainian rulers may say, what happened to the light, other than to call it genocide.” This is absolutely boorish, absolutely “frostbitten,” as people say, a position. ” Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs (faction of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), believes that not only the government of Ukraine, but also the leadership of the United States and the European Union are to blame for the genocide of the Crimean population. He wrote about this on Twitter. It is difficult to disagree with the opinion of Slutsky, given that the United States is the main customer of the events on the Maidan and they actually control Ukraine through the Kiev-controlled government. On the other hand, we should not forget about the role of another state - Turkey, which, against the background of aggravated relations with Russia, will increasingly play the Crimean card, hoping to kindle confessional and ethnic conflicts on the peninsula.
Summarizing the situation, we can conclude that the blockade of the Crimea was an excellent confirmation of the true intentions of the Kiev leadership. For Kiev, the population of Crimea is only a matter of political speculation. The food and energy blockade endangered the life and health of the population of the peninsula, which did not bother the Kiev leaders who were playing up. On the other hand, having overcome the difficulties, the peninsula will benefit from the blockade. A normal power supply system of the Crimea will be created to bypass Ukraine, after which Kiev will completely lose the ability to influence the power supply of the peninsula. The peninsula will be included in the Russian energy system, which, in turn, will release Russia from the need to negotiate with the Ukrainian side. For Ukraine itself, the energy blockade has already led to large-scale financial losses, and a further failure of the peninsula from purchasing electricity will be an extremely serious blow to the weak Ukrainian economy. Meanwhile, the current situation requires tremendous exertion of forces from the authorities of the Republic of Crimea. Providing conditions for realizing the vital needs of citizens is the most important task at present. But no less important is the provision of inevitability of punishment for all those who stood behind the blockade of the peninsula, organized, supported, or directly carried out sabotage against power lines. There is also a lot of work to be done here, only for Russian special services and law enforcement agencies.
Millionth damage
The amount voiced by Natalya Poklonskaya is undoubtedly preliminary. But even so, it is quite high. To date, it is 361 million rubles, whereas at the time of initiation of a criminal case on the fact of the power block it was five times smaller and amounted to 70 million rubles. The amount of damage incurred consists of reports of losses provided by the ministries of industrial policy, transport, health of the Republic of Crimea. It includes the costs associated with the efforts of these ministries to ensure the uninterrupted performance of their duties, even under power block conditions. Of course, the actual numbers of losses incurred by the Crimea are much higher. After all, the damage caused by the energy blockade to industrial enterprises, commercial organizations, and private households of the peninsula has not yet been calculated.
It should be noted that after the start of the power block, the industrial enterprises of the peninsula suspended their work and suffered huge losses. The work of industrial enterprises was suspended to ensure that the available energy resources were directed to the needs of the direct sustenance of the population of Crimea during the energy blockade. They were able to restore their activities only after some improvement in the situation with the energy supply of the peninsula, and they had to work during the night shift. After the New Year holidays, from January 11 2016, the Crimean enterprises started working again, and some of them - at night. However, if in the Crimea it will become colder, then the industrial enterprises of the peninsula will be forced to once again stop their work - electricity will be needed in the residential sector. According to preliminary estimates, the damage incurred by the industrial enterprises of the peninsula can be no less than 900 million rubles. Well, it is absolutely impossible to calculate the damage incurred by each ordinary Crimean citizen - after all, life in the conditions of the energy blockade required material expenses for the purchase of candles, kerosene, fuel for generators, and finally - brought about enormous domestic inconveniences. The system of school and preschool education in the peninsula suffered a great deal of damage, because without electricity, children could not study, attend kindergartens and nurseries, and the training and support staff could perform their professional duties. Currently, almost all educational institutions of the Crimea are provided with diesel generator sets.
How the power block began
The undermining of power transmission lines in the Kherson region was carried out in the autumn of the past 2015 year and became a link in the general “blockade of the peninsula” declared by the Crimean Tatar nationalists. First, that part of the Crimean Tatar activists, which is positioning itself as irreconcilable opponents of the reunification of the Crimea with Russia, launched a campaign on the blockade of the peninsula. In September 2015, a group of activists blocked roads leading from Ukraine to the Republic of Crimea. Prior to the blockade, trucks with food and other goods quietly moved along the roads, which the anti-Russian activists decided to put an end to. The initiator of the blockade was a people's deputy of Ukraine and the representative of the President of Ukraine on the rights of the Crimean Tatar people Mustafa Dzhemilev. Today it is Dzhemilev who is the foremost figure in the ranks of the Crimean Tatar nationalists who support the Kiev regime and oppose the inclusion of the peninsula into the Russian Federation. Mustafa Abduljemil Dzhemilev - a person known. Not only in the Crimea, but throughout the world. He is already 72 of the year and throughout his entire adult life he is a consistent Crimean Tatar nationalist. Initially, back in the 1960-ies, Dzhemilev's activities consisted in the struggle for the right to return the deported Crimean Tatars to the peninsula. At that time, the Crimean Tatars remained among the few deported peoples who did not receive the right to return from Central Asia and Kazakhstan. For this activity, Dzhemilev received the first problems with Soviet law. For less than thirty years, he was tried seven times, fifteen years he spent in prisons under various articles. The first term - one and a half years - Jemilev received in May 1966 of the year when, after being expelled from the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Reclamation Engineering, who had been drafted into the Soviet Army, he simply refused to serve it. It would seem that with such a biography and for fifteen years of “expired” years, Dzhemilev was no longer publicly known. But his “golden hour” struck at the end of 1980's, when the Soviet leadership decided to allow the Crimean Tatars to return from the places of deportation.
Dzhemilev became the most famous Crimean Tatar leader, who received great prestige among his fellow tribesmen. In 1989, he returned to the Crimea himself and settled in Bakhchisarai, and in the summer of 1991, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was elected, who headed Mustafa Dzhemilev. In this post, he remained 22 of the year - until 2013 of the year. In the post-Soviet period stories Crimea Mustafa Dzhemilev became close with the Ukrainian nationalists and began to cooperate with them, primarily in the direction of minimizing Russian influence on the peninsula. Of course, when in 2014, at a national referendum, the inhabitants of Crimea decided to join Russia, Dzhemilev was among the most zealous opponents of reunification. He began to actively exploit the national theme, appealing to the national feelings of the Crimean Tatars and trying to present the situation with the reunification of the Crimea with Russia almost as the beginning of a new era of oppression of the Crimean Tatar people. However, the practice itself showed the wrongness of such allegations. The Crimean Tatars have the same rights in the modern Republic of Crimea as other citizens. Moreover, the Crimean Tatar language was proclaimed one of the three official languages of the Republic of Crimea, along with Russian and Ukrainian. Considering that a whole number of other Turkic and Muslim peoples live in Russia, the Crimean Tatars even benefited from joining the Peninsula into the Russian state, having received the opportunity of constant and unhindered communication with their fellow believers and linguistically close peoples of Russia. In particular, one of the largest Crimean Tatar organizations, Milli Firka (People’s Party), headed by physicist Vasvi Abduraimov, advocated consolidation with other peoples of the Crimean peninsula. Abduraimov supported the entry of the peninsula into the Russian Federation, stressing that in Ukraine the Crimean Tatar people had no development prospects. In an interview published on the Milli Firka website, Vasvi Abduraimov stressed that the Crimean Tatars "were bad in Ukraine because there were no prospects for the revival of the people, and even less for its development. Ukraine was built on a single model without taking into account the specificity of the Crimea, without taking into account the interests of the indigenous people of Crimea, which is the original representative of this land with all the obligations and responsibilities arising from this. On the other hand, the interests of another Slavic part of Ukraine, the Russian part, which is also the original representative of this land, were not taken into account at all ”(www.milli-firka.org).
Nevertheless, some of the Crimean Tatar activists, having their own reasons for that, do not agree with the entry of the peninsula into Russia. They were headed by Mustafa Dzhemilev, who soon after the reunification of the Crimea with Russia announced that the Russian authorities had banned him from entering the territory of the peninsula. 26 February 2015 of the Year Dzhemilev called on the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to impose a complete blockade of the Crimea. First of all, the blockade was understood as the termination of the supply of electricity and food. Refat Abdurakhmanovich Chubarov became the closest associate of Dzhemilev. Junior colleague of Dzhemilev (he was born in 1957 year), Refat Chubarov has a more “systemic” biography - he served in the Soviet Army, studied at the institute, even when the Soviet government worked as a researcher and even director in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution and Socialist Construction in Riga. In 1994, Chubarov was elected to the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In November 2013, it was he who replaced Mustafa Dzhemilev as chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. After the outbreak of events on the Maidan, Refat Chubarov took the anti-Russian side. When Crimea made the decision on reunification with Russia, the policy was issued a warning about the inadmissibility of extremist activities. But Chubarov continued organizing actions against reunification with Russia, after which 5 July 2014 was banned from entering the Republic of Crimea for a period of 5 years. Naturally, Chubarov from the first days took an active part in the preparation of the energy blockade of the peninsula.
In September 2015, supporters of Dzhemilev and Chubarov began the blockade of access roads to the Crimea. The fact that the Ukrainian producers, the nationalists and their Kiev patrons suffered more from the food blockade seemed to care less. Petro Poroshenko said that the action is aimed at the speedy resumption of the "state sovereignty of Ukraine over the Crimea." Ukrainian nationalists, including members of the Right Sector and Aydar, Donbass and Sich volunteer battalions created with his participation, joined the Crimean Tatar activists. Law enforcement agencies of Ukraine did not block the blockade, although on the access roads to the Crimea are located the units of the special-purpose police battalion "Kherson". Fast enough, the flow of trucks from Ukraine stopped, but the Crimea almost did not feel a shortage of food - they began to be imported from the territory of Russia. Then, activists began to thoroughly inspect cars, taking food purchased from citizens for personal consumption from citizens. Then, it was not enough for the activists to blockade the automobile roads and they decided to block the railway. For this path were blocked by concrete slabs. From the very first days of the blockade, voices were heard that it was necessary to block not only food supplies, but also the power supply of the peninsula. Moreover, Dzhemilev and his colleagues saw the practical independence of the Crimea from the presence or absence of food supplies from Ukraine. Then the militants of nationalist organizations decided to move from overlapping methods to overt sabotage.
Diversion against power lines
The idea of the power blockade of Crimea was again thrown by Dzhemilev. In an interview with the Ukrainian 17 channel, Dzhemilev said that “Crimea is provided with electricity from the mainland of Ukraine somewhere around 70%. 30%, which are produced in the territory of Crimea, is quite enough to serve hospitals, schools and the population. But, of course, not enough to ensure the production of military garrisons, which, by the way, consume part of the energy. " 20 November 2015, early in the morning, the dispatchers of emergency services received a message about the emergency shutdown of the Melitopol-Dzhankoy transmission line. A minute later, the Kakhovka-Titan transmission line stopped working. Emergency brigades left for the scene, which found fallen power transmission towers on both lines. As it became known, power transmission poles were undermined by activists - the organizers of the blockade. The explosions occurred at the pylons of all four transmission lines supplying electricity to the Crimea, but two of them were not destroyed and continued to work. Due to the damage to the pylons of power transmission lines, the supply of electricity from Ukraine to the Crimea was reduced by about 30%. Two power lines covered electricity supplies of up to 650 MW of capacity with the needs of the 900-850 MW peninsula.
Ukrainian specialists moved to the scene to carry out repair work on the grounding of the blown up high-voltage line. However, activists gathered at the same place decided not to allow the line to be restored. They began to interfere with the work of electricians, after which there were clashes between activists and Ukrainian police officers who tried to disperse them. In Kiev, Petro Poroshenko met with the leaders of the Crimean Tatar nationalists Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, which described the clashes that occurred - they were called a misunderstanding. Petro Poroshenko explained to Dzhemilev and Chubarov that the police did not intend to ensure the resumption of electricity supplies to the Crimean peninsula. Their task was to provide work on grounding the line.
Consequences of power blockade for the Crimea and Ukraine
After the explosion of power lines in the Crimea, an emergency was introduced, and electricity began to flow into institutions and homes with significant interruptions. The number of disconnected consumers was about 1,6 million. The first days after the sabotage that had taken place, the Russian leadership still hoped that the actions of the activists were independent and the Ukrainian government would ensure the restoration of electricity supplies to Crimea. However, this did not happen. Moreover, the Minister of Energy of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchyshyn stated that without the consent of the Crimean Tatar activists and nationalists, the restoration of electricity supply to the peninsula will not occur. After that, it became clear that Russia should make its own efforts to restore the power supply to the Crimea. The need for further construction of power lines bypassing the Ukrainian territory was also indicated, so that such incidents would not be repeated in the future. The construction of an energy bridge between the Krasnodar Territory and the Crimean Peninsula was intensified. Already 3 December 2015 of the year launched the first line of the energy bridge to the Crimea, which made a shock impression on the Ukrainian authorities, who did not expect Russia to be able to solve the problem so quickly and hoped that with the help of the power unit it could be blackmailed and at the same time affecting the public mood in the Crimea. After the restoration of the power supply of the Crimea, Ukraine realized its powerlessness. Moreover, it suffered real damage from the cessation of electricity supplies to the peninsula. Electricity supplies to the Crimea gave the Ukrainian state about 170 million dollars a year. This is said by many experts. In particular, RIA-News Ukraine cites the opinion of the co-chairman of the Energy Strategies Fund, Dmitry Marunich, who emphasizes that “for the year, about 170 million dollars is the revenue that was planned for the current year to receive electricity supplies to Crimea, but received only a part, about 100 million. This revenue is distributed between Energoatom, Ukrinterenergo, Ukrenergo - everyone earns on it. It is clear that part of the money goes to depreciation, there are some losses in the networks, but at least VAT is paid on this, people pay. This revenue embodies a significant part of the profits of Ukrainian entities and the turnover of business entities. "Accordingly, Ukrenergo paid taxes to replenish the Ukrainian budget. Now it has lost an income item from electricity supplies to Crimea, since the process of full integration of the peninsula into the Russian energy system began. 3 December, Vladimir Putin, who participated in connecting the first stage of the energy bridge, visited Simferopol in December 2010. It is planned to complete the process of integrating Crimea into the Russian energy system by May 2015. To him. Without any doubt, this task will be solved. The beginning of the energy blockade of the Crimea has put Ukraine in a much more difficult position than she tried to put the inhabitants of the peninsula. Thus, the shipment of coal from the territories of the DPR and the LPR was stopped. so many - they are practically ending, and this is the next problem after the losses incurred by the country's budget, having lost revenues from the sale of electricity to the Crimea. Who will return the damage to the Ukrainian business is also unclear. Indeed, in Europe, where modern Ukraine is striving so vainly, great attention is paid to protecting the interests of entrepreneurs. And if, due to state necessity, a business suffers losses, then the state compensates these losses. But in this situation, it is very doubtful that the Kiev authorities will be able, and they deem it necessary, to compensate Ukrainian businessmen for the losses they have suffered.
It is noteworthy that the emergency situation around the power blockade of the Crimea had some positive consequences for innovative developments. Thus, on the landfill in the village of Turgenevo, Belogorsky District of the Republic of Crimea, electricity generation from landfill gas was started. The project to create a biogas station is the first in the Russian Federation. Now the biogas station produces 60 kW / h. It is planned in the near future to equip the entire territory of the biogas station with gas exhaust wells, which will increase energy production to 0.4-0.5 MW of electricity per hour. At the biogas station, an engine of Russian production YMZ-238 is used. Given the difficult situation with the energy supply of the Crimea, the development of such projects can play a very important role. Scientists in November 2015 reported on the project to the leadership of the Crimea and received its support.
Criminal cases and genocide charges
Meanwhile, in her speech, which we talked about at the beginning of the article, Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya stressed that a criminal case had been initiated into the fact of undermining the power transmission lines in the Kherson region of Ukraine. As the accused (in absentia), the second, besides Mustafa Dzhemilev, is the leader of the Crimean Tatar nationalists and one of the organizers of the blockade of the peninsula, entrepreneur Lenur Islyamov. Fifty-year-old Lenur Edemovich Islyamov, like most of his compatriots, was born in Central Asia - it was there that the Soviet government deported Crimean Tatars from the Crimea. He graduated from the dental faculty of the Tashkent Medical Institute, but Perestroika broke out and young Lenur preferred the more adventurous and interesting way of a businessman to the career of a dentist. For more than twenty years of entrepreneurial activity, he has proved himself to be a talented and successful businessman, having created about twenty companies in Russia. By the way, Lenur Islyamov all the time of the post-Soviet Ukrainian statehood retained Russian citizenship. Unlike Mustafa Dzhemilev, Islyamov at first did not commit anti-Russian attacks and even supported the reunification of the Crimea with the Russian Federation. From 2 April to 28 in May 2014, he served on the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Crimea under the leadership of Sergey Aksenov and served as deputy prime minister. Islyamov met with Vladimir Putin several times and was one of the initiators of concluding an agreement on cooperation between the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and the government of Aksyonov. However, later, Islyamov had a conflict with the republic’s higher leadership, after which he resigned.
After his dismissal from the government of Crimea, Lenur Islyamov moved to Kiev, changed Russian citizenship to Ukrainian, and immediately changed his views from pro-Russian to anti-Russian. In the autumn of 2015, we saw Lenura Islyamova among the most active organizers of the blockade of the Crimean Peninsula. 21 December 2015 of the year Islyamov was charged in absentia for committing sabotage (meaning involvement in organizing a power block of the Crimea). Later it was also announced that the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office might initiate another criminal case against the entrepreneur - under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "The organization of an illegal armed formation or participation in it," as Lenura Islyamova may be considered involved in the creation of troops that participated in the blockade. Thus, yesterday's supporter of integration with Russia turned into a defendant in a criminal case. The court decided to arrest the property of Lenur Islyamov, and the entrepreneur himself was given a measure of restraint in absentia. Interesting evidence of Islyamov’s involvement in the organization of the power block was obtained by Russian prankers Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus. Young people called Islyamov, posing as Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov and Verkhovna Rada deputy Anton Gerashchenko. The politician who believed them said that one of the fighters of the Donbass battalion named Enver Kutya carried out the undermining of the pylons in the Kherson region. The prankers spread the information that on November 11 a Ukrainian citizen Kutia was stopped by Ukrainian law enforcement officers, who was about to enter the territory of the Kherson region. With him there were six minutes and two RPGs. But soon the police released him (obviously, not without an order from above), and the fighter drove to the Kherson region, where he sabotaged against the power lines.
In early January, 2016, it became known that the Crimean Parliament was asking for an investigation into the actions of the Ukrainian authorities during the food and energy blockade of the region. According to parliamentarians, as a result of the blockade, thousands of ordinary Crimean people (who, incidentally, have nothing to do with politics) were forced to live with schedules for the constant switching off of light. The actions of the Kiev leadership were called by the Crimean parliamentarians only as an attempt to genocide the population of the peninsula. Deputies of the Parliament of the Republic of Crimea made an official appeal to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and the Investigative Committee of Russia with a request to investigate the genocide against the population of the Crimean Peninsula by the government of Ukraine. The appeal of the Crimean State Council states: “The blockade of the Republic of Crimea, led by the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Mustafa Dzhemilev, Refat Chubarov, as well as a group of people actually operating under the control of the authorities of Ukraine, under the leadership of Lenur Islyamov has been going on for more than four months. This is reflected in the daily reports of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and is a vivid example of the most flagrant violation of human rights, hate crimes, genocide, which are detrimental to the civilian population of Crimea. ” The parliamentarians stressed that the power outages created special obstacles for health care institutions, which are under constant control of the artificial respiration, lung ventilation, life support capsules for newborns, operating rooms, equipment for maternity hospitals and intensive care units. Thus, a direct threat was created to the life and health of people, including sick people, old people and children being treated in health care facilities in the Crimea.
Deputies of the Crimean parliament noted that Kiev is directly responsible for the fact that criminal groups were created that organized sabotage on power lines. In addition, the Crimean parliamentarians asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation to assist in initiating proceedings for the recognition of genocide against the population of Crimea by the Ukrainian authorities in international organizations - the General Assembly and the UN Security Council, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States , Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “We are convinced that the terrorists and their accomplices, who encroached on the life and health of the civilian population of the Crimean Federal District, cannot escape responsibility. This crime does not have a statute of limitations, and sooner or later the perpetrators must suffer deserved punishment, ”reads the appeal of the State Council of the Republic of Crimea.
Meanwhile, Russian politicians have already given their assessment of the appeals of the republican parliamentarians. It should be noted that as early as the beginning of December of the past 2015, the head of the Russian government, Dmitry Medvedev, called the policy of the power blockade of the Crimean peninsula just as a genocide, the policy of the blockade of the Crimean peninsula. The prime minister stressed that “whatever the Ukrainian rulers may say, what happened to the light, other than to call it genocide.” This is absolutely boorish, absolutely “frostbitten,” as people say, a position. ” Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs (faction of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), believes that not only the government of Ukraine, but also the leadership of the United States and the European Union are to blame for the genocide of the Crimean population. He wrote about this on Twitter. It is difficult to disagree with the opinion of Slutsky, given that the United States is the main customer of the events on the Maidan and they actually control Ukraine through the Kiev-controlled government. On the other hand, we should not forget about the role of another state - Turkey, which, against the background of aggravated relations with Russia, will increasingly play the Crimean card, hoping to kindle confessional and ethnic conflicts on the peninsula.
Summarizing the situation, we can conclude that the blockade of the Crimea was an excellent confirmation of the true intentions of the Kiev leadership. For Kiev, the population of Crimea is only a matter of political speculation. The food and energy blockade endangered the life and health of the population of the peninsula, which did not bother the Kiev leaders who were playing up. On the other hand, having overcome the difficulties, the peninsula will benefit from the blockade. A normal power supply system of the Crimea will be created to bypass Ukraine, after which Kiev will completely lose the ability to influence the power supply of the peninsula. The peninsula will be included in the Russian energy system, which, in turn, will release Russia from the need to negotiate with the Ukrainian side. For Ukraine itself, the energy blockade has already led to large-scale financial losses, and a further failure of the peninsula from purchasing electricity will be an extremely serious blow to the weak Ukrainian economy. Meanwhile, the current situation requires tremendous exertion of forces from the authorities of the Republic of Crimea. Providing conditions for realizing the vital needs of citizens is the most important task at present. But no less important is the provision of inevitability of punishment for all those who stood behind the blockade of the peninsula, organized, supported, or directly carried out sabotage against power lines. There is also a lot of work to be done here, only for Russian special services and law enforcement agencies.
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