Crimean officials are looking on the bright side of the peninsula's recent electricity shortages.
Much of the peninsula has been in the dark since saboteurs exploded power cables from Ukraine last month, but there could be a silver lining: “In 2016 because of this situation we're simply going to have a demographic explosion,” Andrei Filonov, a local government chief in the city of Yevpatoria, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency Thursday.
To cope with the impending baby boom, Filonov requested extra cash to renovate a maternity clinic from Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov. “Well done. You're not wasting time. The president said we need to double the population,” Aksyonov replied, according to Interfax.
Crimea previously received around 70 percent of its power from Ukraine, where anti-Russia protesters have hindered work to fix the cables. Russia, which annexed the peninsula last year, has promised undersea cables from the mainland and announced on Thursday that some power had been restored, but it will take time to fully meet the peninsula's energy demands.
On Friday Crimean politician Vladimir Konstantinov waded in, joking that electricity had become so large a part of Crimeans' lives that boys should be named after the diesel power generators in use all over the peninsula.
“It's a very good name — Generator Ivanovich. Gena for short. Not bad at all,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
