A boy walks at a tent camp opened by the Russian Emergencies Ministry to lend support to local residents during the power cuts, in Simferopol, Crimea, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Pavel RebrovPAVEL REBROV/Reuters
No one, not even Vladimir Putin and his closest friends, really thinks that Russia has a good legal claim to Crimea. So the government of Ukraine should uphold its own lawful claim by restoring the recently disrupted supply of electricity to the Crimean peninsula. It should not be punishing the people who live there, but doing what they can for them, even while Russia is occupying Crimea.
Four electricity pylons blew up last week, and activists among the indigenous Crimean Tatar minority (of Turkic origin) have claimed responsibility; some overzealous Ukrainian nationalists may be involved, too. At the time of writing, most of Crimea is still dependent on emergency generators.
The Ukrainian government has held off on making most of the required repairs until the militant Tatars give the go-ahead.
It's not prudent, or humane, on the part of the Ukrainian government to drag its heels in restoring connections between continental Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula.
Given Ukraine's well-founded claim to Crimea, the Ukrainian government should act as the peninsula's legitimate government, serving its inhabitants. The inhabitants are now short on supplies of food and drinking water, too.
For several months, the pro-Russian militants in some eastern provinces of Ukraine have been lying fairly low, though not much has been truly resolved. The tenuous rapprochement between the West and Russia over Syria is probably a factor.
The Ukrainian government should be generous to its citizens in Crimea, rather than maintaining an embargo. The country is vulnerable to Russia, particularly because it relies on natural gas supplies from the Russian company Gazprom in the winter, though Ukraine has a good stock at the moment – coming by an indirect route from Russia.
The Ukrainian government is also closing its air space to Russian airplanes, having already excluded flights from Russia into Ukraine. At the moment, Ukraine has an advantage over Russia, but in the long term, Moscow can cause more trouble to Kiev than Kiev to Moscow. Ultimately, Ukraine will not prosper unless its natural economic connections to its neighbours are healthy – to the west and to the east.