Berliners demand answers on blackout

When Silke Peters bought a crank radio and a camping stove just after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, her husband thought she was "a little crazy".

- Kate Connolly

"He put me down, only half-jokingly, as a prepper," she said, referring to the kind of person who stockpiles in case of catastrophe.

For almost four years, the items gathered dust in the cellar of the Peters' two-room flat in Zehlendorf, a well-to-do district of Berlin. But in recent days the wind-up radio - with its inbuilt torch and charge point - has come into its own during Germany's longest power cut since the second world war.

Leftwing anarchist militants have claimed responsibility for an arson attack on Saturday that cut the electricity to about 45,000 households, almost 2,000 businesses, four hospitals, 74 care homes, 20 schools and a considerable chunk of the public transport network in southwestern Berlin.

Federal state prosecutors have taken over the criminal investigation into the saboteurs, who said their aim was to "turn off the juice of those in power" and to highlight Germany's overdependence on fossil fuels.