Russia has started removing the transformers from the Northern Crimean Canal, which historically supplied up to 85% of the Crimean Peninsula's fresh water. ATESH partisans say occupation authorities have begun hauling them to electrical substations damaged by Ukrainian strikes. The claim has not been independently verified.

So the occupation is cannibalizing its own infrastructure — pulling equipment off one facility to plug the hole in another. The units being taken are not junk: 10- to 40-MVA transformers that once fed large pumping stations, including NS-355 on the Connecting Canal. That class of equipment fits almost any substation.

The pumping stations are available for stripping because the canal has not worked since June 2023. Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam, and the Dnipro level at the intake fell below critical levels, and the flow of Dnipro water into Crimea stopped. The pumps have sat idle ever since.

Russia is dismantling the consequences of its own destruction to repair the damage from Ukrainian strikes.

Transformers are going where war needs them

Russian command now prioritizes facilities that feed the defense industry, rail junctions, air defenses, radars, and command posts, per ATESH.

Moving transformers from dead pumping stations to those substations is an attempt to restore power fast, without waiting for foreign deliveries or long production runs.

ATESH calls it a dead end. The stock of equipment that can be pulled from other sites keeps shrinking, and every new Ukrainian strike opens a new hole with nothing left to fill it.

Ukraine has been burning Crimean substations for three weeks

The claim lands in the middle of a sustained campaign. Ukrainian drones have hit Crimean power infrastructure night after night since late June.

Ukraine struck 37 energy facilities across occupied southern Ukraine between 1 and 5 July, targeting electrical substations and transformers in Crimea and parts of Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, according to Unmanned Systems Forces Commander Robert Brovdi.

Occupation authorities declared a peninsula-wide state of emergency on 26 June. They have shut children's camps, halted civilian fuel sales, and imposed rolling blackouts.