More than half a million people are without power in occupied-Crimea, Russia and Ukraine after a storm in the Black Sea region flooded roads, ripped up trees and took down power lines, according to Russian state media and Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy.

Fierce storms killed three people on the Russian and Crimean Black Sea coast on Monday, with hundreds evacuated. State news agency TASS reported that one person had been killed in the resort city of Sochi,

Russia says hurricane winds and heavy flooding have left about 1.9 million people without power in the south, referring also to Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Moscow. Russia's energy ministry says the worst hit are Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea.

A snowstorm over the Black Sea has caused severe damage on the Ukrainian coast, on the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and in southern Russia. The Ukrainska Pravda newspaper reported that a 110-metre-high chimney of a combined heat and power plant collapsed in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Sunday night due to the snowstorm.