By Yuliia Dysa and Alexander Tanas
KYIV/CHISINAU, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Parts of Ukraine and Moldova, including the capitals of both neighbouring countries, were plunged into blackouts on Saturday caused by malfunctions to high-voltage power lines, officials said.
Officials did not directly link the blackouts to war damage, although Ukraine’s power grid has suffered from the accumulated impact of months of air strikes leading to severe restrictions on electricity supplies in recent weeks. Ukraine’s digital ministry also said a cyberattack was not to blame.
The system is under greater pressure as a cold spell returns this weekend. Russia said on Friday it had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure until February 1 at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump. Kyiv said it would reciprocate, and the countries did not report major attacks.
At least four Ukrainian regions and some parts of Moldova were affected by the blackouts, as well as both capitals Kyiv and Chisinau.
The metro in Kyiv suspended operations and water supplies in the city were cut. Traffic lights and public transport in Chisinau were not working, according to the city mayor, and most districts did not have electricity.
At a metro station in Kyiv with dimmed emergency lights, some passengers were still waiting, hopeful of resuming their journeys. A worker said the entire system had been shut down for nearly an hour.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal blamed a technical malfunction that caused simultaneous outages on two high-voltage power lines, one linking the power grids of Romania and Moldova and another connecting western and central Ukraine. Both took place at 10:42 a.m. Kyiv time, he said.
Shmyhal said the transmission outage caused a shutdown in Ukraine’s power grid, triggered automatic protection at some substations and the temporary disconnection of nuclear power plant units from the grid. An energy industry source said the units were still working at a reduced capacity.
Shmyhal expected power supplies to be restored in coming hours.
Moldova’s energy ministry said the disruption in that country was triggered by the outage in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Alexander Tanas, Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Daniel Flynn, Hugh Lawson, Peter Graff)
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