Largest City in Crimea Goes Dark

A couple days ago I suggested that Crimea was looking more and more like Cuba. The peninsula is facing a fuel shortage which as resulted first in long gas lines and as of this week all sales of fuel to civilians have been suspended. Also suspended were the dozens of summer camps that the region in known for.

While all of this was happening in Crimea, the largest city on the peninsula, Sevastopol, was in slightly better shape. Gas rationing was limited to a couple of days a week there and life was more normal. 

Last night that changed. Ukrainian drones hit a major power station and now much of the city of Sevastopol is without power.

Current power outage map in Sevastopol reported by local monitors: pic.twitter.com/saUEMH9RgX

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 24, 2026

The BBC has more:

A Ukrainian air attack on Russian-occupied Crimea has knocked out power in its largest city, Sevastopol, Moscow-installed governor Mikhail Razvozhayev says.

Ukraine says its drones struck the city’s main power substation overnight on Tuesday.

Razvozhayev warned some areas would be left without power until Wednesday evening…

“We will not be intimidated by the lack of light. We have gone through more than that, and we will survive now,” Razvozhayev said in a Telegram message to the public.

“The enemy is again striking vilely, trying to deprive us of our usual living conditions and sow panic.”

On Sunday, Russian-installed leader Sergei Aksyonov announced all petrol sales had been suspended.

Euromaidan Press reports that the power system in Crimea is dependent on natural gas piped from Russia, which makes it very vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks. 

Russia built two power plants in occupied Crimea to free it from blackouts. They run on gas piped from Russia..

The two plants at the center of the project—Balaklava in Sevastopol and Tavrida in Simferopol—were built to end Crimea’s reliance on imported electricity and opened by Vladimir Putin in 2019. Together, they were meant to cover about 90% of consumption, a figure Russian authorities promised at the time, and both were gas-fired, built around Siemens turbines that were transferred to Crimea and installed in breach of EU sanctions.

Because those parts can’t be replaced from European sources, damage to the gas plants in going to be difficult to repair at best. Also, the pipeline that brings the gas to the plants is vulnerable to attack. So the chances of wrecking the electricity supply for the peninsula seems pretty high. That’s bad news for an area that is basically considered a summer resort as well as the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The only open connection Crimea has to the Russian mainland is the Kerch bridge. How much longer is that going to survive? There have been suggestions online that Ukraine is planning a big attack on this remaining connection soon.

A night strike on Crimea…

Today, there was a relatively weak raid. Obviously, the enemy is accumulating drones for the next major strike.

For now, attempts are being made to weaken our air defense with small raids. Moreover, primarily in the area of the Crimean Bridge!!!… pic.twitter.com/QlKstCmnIR

— 🇷🇺 Yuri Podolyaka (@YuriPodolyaka) June 24, 2026

So we’ll have to wait a few more days to see what comes next, but right now Crimea really is looking a lot like Cuba.

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