Massive outage knocks out energy throughout Ukraine, Moldova
Ukraine and its neighbor Moldova both experienced power outages on Saturday amid problems on Ukraine’s grid, officials said.
The grid emergency caused a halt to Kyiv’s water supply and metro operations, while most districts in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, were without electricity, they said.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmygal said that the Ukrainian grid had experienced a “technical malfunction.”
The cause of the malfunction was initially unclear.
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has come under frequent attacks by Russian forces amid Moscow’s invasion of the country.
What are officials saying about the power cuts?
“Today at 10:42 am (0842 GMT), a technical malfunction occurred, causing a simultaneous shutdown of the 400 kilovolt line between the power grids of Romania and Moldova and the 750 kilovolt line between western and central Ukraine,” Shmygal said on Telegram.
He said at least three regions and Kyiv were experiencing emergency power cuts but that he expected the power supply to be restored in the coming hours.
Kyiv Metro said in a post on Facebook that “due to a power outage from external power supply centers, train service and escalator operation have been temporarily suspended in the metro.”
According to a statement from the Moldovan Energy Ministry statement on Telegram, voltage dropped on one of the power lines into Moldova coming from Ukraine amid disruptions in the neighboring country.
Officials in Chisinau said that even traffic lights there were not operating.
The outages in Kyiv come after the Kremlin on Friday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop striking Kyiv for a week until Sunday following a request from US counterpart Donald Trump.
Trump had said he asked Putin to halt strikes on the Ukrainian capital and the surrounding area due to extreme cold weather.
Edited by: Saim Dušan Inayatullah
