The Defense Ministry of Ukraine asks the Finance Ministry to allocate at least 30 million hryvnias to resume electricity supplies to strategic facilities of Ukraine.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, Defense Minister of Ukraine Yuri Yekhanurov claimed this to journalists before his meeting with President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko on Friday.

According to him, the Defense Ministry owes 147 million hryvnias for electrical energy, including the arrears for last year, and has paid only 38 million hryvnias.

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At the same time, the Minister emphasized that the Ministry cannot pay out the debt for electricity by itself. “We did not transfer the money because we don’t have any”, he said.

Yuri Yekhanurov informed that electricity supplies were cut off to 72 strategic facilities, including 8 bases of permanent combat readiness in the air defense system - air defense radar units and special assignment regiments, which must not be cut off under any condition, in line with a special resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers.

According to the Minister, every such object controls 150 km of the air space, and today the Ukrainian air force has “gaps” in its defense capacity.

The cutoffs took place in the Crimea, the Lviv, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Vinnytsya, Kharkiv, Donets, Zhytomyr, Luhansk, and Sumy Oblasts, Yuri Yekhanurov said.