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East-Ukrainian security officials say terrorist actions to disrupt New Year possible

Earlier on the same day, an ‘unauthorized interference in the Lugansk power grids

LUGANSK, December 31. /TASS/. State Security Ministry of East-Ukrainian self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic does not rule out a possibility of terrorist actions to destabilize the situation in Lugansk during the New Year holidays, a spokesman for the ministry said Wednesday night.

Earlier on the same day, an ‘unauthorized interference in the Lugansk power grids’ - the way the incident was described by local officials later - resulted in an outage of more than seventy boiler houses and ten hospitals. It occurred at 18:15 Moscow Standard Time.

By the time of reporting, provisional supplies of electricity to fifty-five boiler houses and four medical institutions - two hospitals, a nursery home and a psycho-neurological preventive treatment clinic - had been restored.

“Feeding of electricity to socially significant facilities is underway,” a spokesman for the staff set up to steer the elimination of the emergency told TASS.

Wednesday night, air temperature in Lugansk sank to minus 16 degrees Celsius, which is lower than the usual winter temperature in Ukrainian steppe-lands.

“Units of the Odessa specialized brigade of the State Security Ministry have been dispatched to take control over transformer stations in the eastern districts of the city,” the interlocutor at the ministry told TASS.

“Two specialized groups have taken full control of a number of substations,” he said. “We have the suspicions that terrorist activity has been involved.

Lugansk People’s Republic Prime Minister Igor Plotnitsky and city mayor Manolis Pilavov have arrived at the staff for elimination of the incident.

“We’re doing everything in our power to prevent the default of heating and water supply systems at socially significant facilities,” the spokesman said.