Deadly storm in Crimea: Massive power cuts, Russian defense line erased
A severe storm in the Black Sea has affected parts of the Ukraine coast and southern Russia. Media outlets report that at least one person has lost their life, and around 700,000 residents of occupied Crimea are without power. The storm seems to have also swept away the Russian coastal defense line.
4:21 AM EST, November 28, 2023
The storm made landfall in Crimea on Sunday evening. Based on media coverage, the wind speed touched nearly 90 miles per hour, and the waves surged to almost 33 feet high. During the course of the storm, at least one person died, and 700,000 residents of Crimea found themselves without electricity, stated the independent Russian newspaper, The Moscow Times.
Anton Heraschenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs, has claimed that the natural disaster wiped the Russian coastline's defense line from the map. "The storm swept away the trenches in occupied Crimea that the [Russian] military had dug on the beaches," the politician posted on portal X, formerly known as Twitter. "In light of information from Crimean media, in Yevpatoria, the water obliterated the coastal defense line, engineering structures, and shooting positions," he added. Newsweek.com reported that it had tried to reach out to Russian officials regarding the matter.
The storm also caused disruptions in the Odessa region of Ukraine, as per Kyiv Post reports. The National Energy Company Ukrenergo made a social media announcement stating, "The blizzard was so fierce that it broke a metal transmission post. The distribution networks of the regional energy company also suffered damage".
The Odessa-Reni highway was closed to all traffic on Sunday due to heavy snowfall, and truck movement was limited on the Kiev-Odessa highway. Concurrently, a weather warning was issued in Kiev on Monday due to significant snowfall and strong winds.
