Putin slams power monopoly after big Moscow outage
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Moscow was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after a big power outage that President Vladimir Putin blamed on the state-owned electricity monopoly headed by a liberal politician viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin.
The outage, caused by a fire in a substation, shut the stock exchange, crippled transport and threatened mobile phone links in the sweltering Russian capital.
Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said the breakdown was caused by a fire and explosion overnight at an electricity substation. There was no evidence of a terrorist attack, he said.
But Putin, who delayed a provincial trip because of the crisis, pointed the finger at the management of Unified Energy System whose chief executive is Anatoly Chubais, one of the architects of the post-Soviet market revolution whose liberal views sit uneasily with Kremlin hard-liners.
Maybe it’s just a little surprise to celebrate the new pipeline–a foretaste of things to come form the ‘architects of the post-Soviet market revolution’ who shrunk the Russian economy by over 40%.
May 26th, 2005 at 9:22 am
hmm – i remember how they cut the power in nyc and also in england and italy in 2003. i wonder if this is another "managed" outage.