Western Ukraine is surrounded by NATO states while the historically ethnic Russian east with the energy resources borders Russia; source: Korean Times
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Ukraine Electricity Emergency Courtesy of Guess Who?
by
The division of Ukraine since Kiev and Washington launched a civil war in the spring of 2014 against the Russian-speaking eastern provinces, has now created a predictable new economic crisis for that devastated country. The rogues in Kiev, by refusing any serious diplomatic resolution of the conflict for the past nine months, but rather opting to speak with bombs and terror, have now created for its citizens a desperate situation. The country now has dramatic power outages and heating crises as severe winter sets in.
In terms of its economic geography, the western parts of Ukraine are traditionally agricultural with some of the finest top soils in the world thanks to a relative lack of chemical spraying during the austere Cold War times in the Soviet Union. In 2011 western Ukraine was the world’s third largest grain exporter. Here in the west is the power base–if any at this point–of the Kiev government of President Petro Poroschenko and his Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The population, which in past history was a part of the Polish Empire, is overwhelming Roman Catholic and sometimes anti-Russian.
The eastern parts of Ukraine—Donbas, Donetsk, Crimea (when it was still Ukraine), Luhansk—these parts are, historically, majority Russian-speaking Ukrainians, most of whom who are nominally Russian Orthodox. Eastern Ukraine, which was the main electoral base of ousted-President Viktor Yanukovich, is the heart of Ukraine’s coal and domestic gas and oil industry, as well of the Soviet-era nuclear power plants. Coal supplies some 40% of Ukraine’s power plants.
Democracy in the dark?
Now the stupidity of Washington’s war in east Ukraine hits painfully home. Of course not in far-away Washington where the militarist neo-con warhawks around Assistant Secretary of State Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland, Republican warhawk Senator John McCain, Vice President Joe Biden, CIA head John O. Brennan, relish every Ukrainian deprivation in hopes it will force Putin to invade and give the US and NATO military industrial complex their long-sought pretext for a new world war to re-form their global geopolitical chessboard.
Ukraine is in the midst of a critical electricity shortage as the hard eastern winter with below zero temperatures sets in. As this is being written the temperature in Kiev is 12 degrees centigrade below zero and winter has barely begun.
Kiev Energy Minister, Vladimir Demtschischin, is pleading with industry and citizens to sharply reduce electricity use in the peak hours between five o’clock and nine in the night. Cities across the Ukraine are reporting daily power blackouts more typical for a poor African country, with some cities experiencing daily outages up to six hours. The situation in Ukraine’s power plants is described as catastrophic according to Ukrainskaja Pravda online. They warn, “Kiev could freeze.”
The critical chokepoint is the coal-rich Donbas region in the east were Kiev’s and Washington’s war “against terrorists” in the east has brought coal mine supplies to a halt. No coal for the power plants, no electricity to light homes or power industry or provide heat. Then, because of rationing of natural gas by Kiev because of their break with Russia, her main gas supplier, homes are using energy-intensive electric heaters to avoid freezing, making the electricity crisis worse. Many cities in western Ukraine have turned off their street lighting to save electricity.
To add to the emergency, on December 28, the Kiev government announced that it had shut down one of the six reactors in its most powerful nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhia nuclear plant, for the second time in a month because of an apparent electrical malfunction. The plant is operating at only 40% power at present.
