Oleg Zubkov, who runs the Skazka zoo in Yalta and the Taigan safari park, said that during the power outage, the zoo was being heated by two generators, one of which failed on December 1. "We cannot repair it as it’s made in China and we have problems with spare parts," Zubkov said.

SIMFEROPOL, December 4. /TASS/. A white tiger cub has frozen to death at a zoo in Yalta, a resort city in southern Crimea cut off from Ukrainian power supplies, its director said on Friday.

Russia's Emergencies Ministry recently installed a 100-kilowatt portable generator at Taigan, home to some 50 African lions, 40 tigers and hundreds of other animals. "We asked for another generator for Skazka but received nothing," the director said.

Meanwhile, Crimean prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya blamed the director for the tiger’s death. She said all private companies had to buy generators themselves. "He did not provide the necessary conditions to prevent the animal’s death," the prosecutor said. The cub was a son of a tigress given to the zoo by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Crimea was without power supplied from Ukraine for some 10 days, with portable generators offering the main source for the peninsula’s two million population. President Vladimir Putin arrived in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol, on December 2 to launch the first line of a power bridge from mainland Russia.

Four transmission lines were supplying Crimea with electric power from Ukraine until November 20, when two pylons were blown up and a state of emergency declared. In the early hours of November 22, another two pylons were attacked.