24 October 2026, 13:44
A blackout in Crimea brought maritime and urban transportation to a halt
Ця стаття також доступна українською
ILLUSTRATION: Intent/AI
A large-scale blackout occurred in occupied Crimea on the night of October 24. It caused public transportation to come to a halt, disrupted maritime traffic, and led to an almost complete shutdown of internet traffic.
This was reported by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.
The occupying authorities claimed there was a power grid failure outside the peninsula. At the same time, NASA satellites detected a fire at the key Russian “Taman” power substation, which supplies electricity to Crimea.
The widespread power outage affected both major cities and entire regions of the peninsula. Dzhankoy and the Dzhankoy District, Yalta, Sudak, Inkerman, as well as the Belogorsk, Simferopol, and Kurman districts were left without power. Oleg Kryuchkov, a so-called “advisor” to the “head of Crimea,” stated that critical infrastructure had been urgently switched to backup power sources.
Despite assurances from the occupying administration that power restoration had begun around 1:37 a.m., local residents reported widespread power outages again in the morning. In Sevastopol, trolleybus and maritime passenger transport services had to be completely suspended first thing in the morning.
The NetBlocks monitoring project recorded an almost complete drop in internet traffic across the entire peninsula.
The 500/220 kV “Taman” substation is located in the Krasnodar Krai of the Russian Federation and serves as the main hub of the so-called Russian “energy bridge” to the occupied peninsula. It is through this facility that Russia reroutes electricity from its own power grid across the Kerch Strait after power supplies from mainland Ukraine were cut off in 2015. Any accidents or damage to this substation automatically leave most of Crimea without electricity, as the peninsula’s own generating capacity is insufficient to meet its needs.
