Parts of Ukraine and Moldova, including Kyiv and Chisinau, were plunged into blackouts on Saturday after a malfunction on high-voltage power lines, with electricity restored later in the day.
Officials said two power lines between Romania and Moldova and within Ukraine stopped operating, triggering outages across several regions.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed ice buildup on the lines and ruled out a cyberattack.
“In the morning, a technological accident occurred on the power grid: two lines between Romania and Moldova and within the territory of Ukraine stopped operating,” he said in his nightly video address.
“The causes are being thoroughly investigated.” He added that Ukraine had increased power imports to meet demand.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said the two failures happened within a minute of each other, “leading to a cascade of shutdowns in seven regions of the country,” and to the temporary disconnection of some nuclear power units from the grid.
Moldova’s Energy Ministry said the disruption there was caused by problems in Ukraine’s grid that led to a voltage drop on the line linking Romania and Moldova. Officials said it took about three and a half hours for electricity supplies to return to normal.
In Kyiv, metro services were suspended and water supplies were briefly cut. Emergency teams led about 500 passengers out of underground stations.
Nearly 3,500 apartment buildings were left without heating, Zelenskyy said. “The city and utilities and energy experts are promising to fix the heating situation by tomorrow morning,” he added. “But the pace should be faster.”
In Chisinau, traffic lights and some public transport stopped working and most districts lost electricity, the city’s mayor said.
Officials did not directly link the incident to conflict damage, though Ukraine’s power grid has been weakened by earlier Russian strikes.
Russia and Ukraine said they had paused attacks on energy infrastructure during the blackout period.
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The Kremlin said on Friday (30 January) that Russian President had received a personal request from his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump. The request was to halt strikes on Kyiv until 1 February to create a favourable environment for peace negotiations.
The European Commission has announced €153 million ($183 million) in emergency aid for Ukraine, alongside €8 million ($9.5 million) to support Moldova, which hosts large numbers of Ukrainian refugees.
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