SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine – Weeks after the city was plunged into darkness when mysterious culprits blew up power lines supplying electricity from mainland Ukraine, many residents of Simferopol had turned their backs on Kyiv and were looking to Moscow.
“I don’t know if the Ukrainians thought this (the blockade) would win us over and make us loyal to Kyiv, but if they did, they’re pretty stupid,” said Igor Plotnikov, a pensioner. “If before some residents were uncertain about the new authorities here and whether they should trust them, now they are only certain that the new authorities are more reliable than the ones in Kyiv.”
On Dec. 8, Russia’s Energy Ministry said power had been fully restored by the Ukrainian side, which for weeks it had accused of intentionally delaying repairs. Ukrainian authorities in the Kherson Oblast, where the power lines were first damaged on Nov. 21, said on the same day that supplies had only partially been restored, however, with three electricity lines still down.
The Russian state-run news stations now dominant in Crimea reported the news on Dec. 8 almost on loop, the phrase “energy restored to Crimea” repeated again and again.
The broadcasts left out the fact that a day earlier, Kremlin-backed Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov had said the peninsula would never again use electricity supplies from Ukraine.
“We already rejected everything Ukrainian a long time ago. … Electricity was the last thread tying us to Ukraine. And today we cut that thread completely and have no intention of supporting such relations ever again,” Aksyonov was cited as saying by Russian media outlets.
For the most part, residents seemed to either trust Aksyonov’s promises of full power supplies from Russia or to have grown accustomed to their new reality.
During the day, the only sign of electricity troubles in the city were signs on shop entrances boasting about the possession of generators or warning visitors that that they would be closing early. Other shops warned that they would not sell alcohol past 7 p.m., apparently encouraging people to obey an informal curfew.
Many businesses continued operating as if they were oblivious to the blackout, however, with hotels still charging guests full price even despite the lack of electricity.
Ironically, the only hotel offering guests uninterrupted power supplies on Dec. 7 was Hotel Ukraine. The bright lights of the hotel were like an oasis in a desert of pitch-black streets and dead trolley lines.
“They stopped running the trolley buses most of the time to preserve electricity,” said Artem Simonovsky, a taxi driver not giving his last name. “Most of the street lights are out, so it’s always black on many of the roads. A lot of areas have generators for residential buildings, but some people still only get four hours a day, with that time split up very inconveniently,” he said, noting that some of his friends had electricity only in the wee hours of the morning when they were sleeping anyway.
“But Russia says they are going to have full power for us soon, and I believe them more than the Ukrainians now,” he said.
The peninsula’s shift toward Moscow – whether voluntary or forced – was evident on the main streets, with billboards featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s portrait in some areas and signs proclaiming “the generous sponsorship” of the Russian president in areas under reconstruction.
Simonovsky said that despite the diplomatic tensions and Western sanctions that had come as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in February 2014, no one should be surprised that Crimean residents might be more loyal to Moscow now.
“It was the lesser of two evils,” he said. “Kyiv just didn’t give a crap about us; they made that clear from the beginning. They brought up our peninsula only when they wanted the West to feel sorry for them, but they did nothing for us. They never reached out to people in Crimea, and then this,” he said. “What do they expect?”
