Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity as a violent storm destroys infrastructure.

More than half a million people in occupied Crimea, Russia and Ukraine are without power after a storm in the Black Sea region flooded roads, downed trees and destroyed power lines, according to Russian state media and the Ukrainian Energy Ministry.

More than 2,000 towns and villages were without power Sunday evening and Monday morning in 16 Ukrainian regions, including Odessa, Mykolaiv and inland Kyiv, as trees were uprooted, power lines snapped and substations failed, leaving nearly 150,000 households in the region without electricity said the Energy Ministry of Ukraine.

A 110-meter-high chimney at a heat and power plant collapsed in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Sunday evening, adding to the losses of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which had already suffered severe damage from Moscow’s military Campaign against the Ukrainian power grid.

As winter approaches, Russia attacks civil infrastructure far from the front line, leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity, heat and water for days.

Although heat supplies were restored after power plants in Odessa were shut down for several hours due to power fluctuations, Ukrainian officials expected the weather to worsen as meteorologists predicted stronger winds and snowfall.

The head of Russia’s national weather service said the storm that hit Crimea was the strongest on record, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Storm deaths

According to local media, at least three people died in the storm.

One person was killed in the resort town of Sochi, another on the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula and a third person aboard a ship in the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from mainland Russia, state news agency TASS reported.

According to the Russian Energy Ministry, “about 1.9 million people” were affected by power outages in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Crimea.

Crimea’s Moscow-appointed governor declared a state of emergency and hundreds of people were evacuated.

A video posted online showed large waves sweeping across the coast of Sochi, sweeping away cars.

In the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, an aquarium was flooded and nearly 800 exotic fish, including pike and piranhas, died from thermal shock when cold seawater flooded the facility, the aquarium director said.

Roman Vilfand, the head of Russia’s National Weather Service, said a similar storm hit the region in November 1854 during the Crimean War. At least 30 ships sank off the coast of Crimea, RIA Novosti said.

In southern Russia, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium halted crude oil loading at the port of Novorossiysk on Monday due to “extremely adverse weather conditions,” including wind speeds of up to 86 kilometers per hour (54 miles per hour) and waves of up to 8 meters (26 feet). ) high. A cargo ship ran aground in the port city of Anapa.