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Agence France-Presse

Ukraine’s power grid experienced mass outages on Saturday after a “technical malfunction” caused electrical lines between Moldova, Romania and Ukraine to fail, Ukraine’s energy minister said.
The outages knocked out water supplies to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and prompted a complete shutdown of the city’s metro network, paralysing transport for thousands.
“Today at 10.42am 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,” said energy minister Denys Shmyhal on Telegram.
“Power will be restored within the next few hours,” he added.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the incident an “emergency” and said restoration work was under way.

“The task is to stabilise the situation soon,” he said on Telegram.
In Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the southwest, most of Chisinau, the capital, was also without electricity for unknown reasons, the city’s mayor said.
According to a Moldovan energy ministry statement on the Telegram app, disruptions in Ukraine’s grid led to a voltage drop on ‍one of the power lines into Moldova.
The issue piles further pressure on Ukraine’s energy grid, which was already in a fragile state due to weeks of intense Russian bombardment.
Ukrainian authorities did not say on Saturday what caused the electrical lines to fail. But they ruled out Russian cyberwarfare.

As President Zelensky announced, “the accident occurred due to technical reasons on the lines between the power grids of Ukraine and Moldova” Ukraine’s ministry of digital transformation said.
The Kremlin, which has bombarded Ukraine’s energy grid for weeks, said on Friday it was refraining from attacks on Kyiv until Sunday following an appeal from US President Donald Trump.
The developments come as Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev is set to hold talks with US officials in Miami later on Saturday, and as the UN’s nuclear watchdog raises the alarm about the perilous condition of Ukraine’s atomic power plants after persistent Russian air strikes.
Russia has targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure throughout its nearly four-year invasion, but Kyiv says this winter has been the toughest yet, with attacks cutting power and heating to millions during sub-zero temperatures.
Kyiv’s metro system completely suspended operations on Saturday due to the power cut.


Around 800,000 passengers use the network daily, according to data published last year.
Residents also use its 52 stations as bomb shelters during Russian attacks.
The metro network will serve as a shelter until power resumes, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram.
Meanwhile, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius questioned whether Russian President Vladimir Putin really wants to seek peace in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
In comments to the RND media group published on Saturday, Pistorius said US President Donald Trump had injected momentum into diplomatic efforts but stressed that Moscow’s actions tell a different story.
“So far, however, I see no signs that Russia seriously wants peace,” Pistorius said.
During negotiations between the warring parties under US mediation in Abu Dhabi last weekend, Putin bombed Ukraine “in a way that has hardly been seen in this war”.
He said such strikes went beyond military objectives.
“This is terror directed exclusively at the civilian population during a winter with temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius.”
Pistorius added that Putin has shown no willingness to compromise.
Additional reporting by dpa, Bloomberg


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The incident, in sub-zero temperatures, prompted a complete shutdown of Kyiv’s metro network and knocked out its water supplies


The incident, in sub-zero temperatures, prompted a complete shutdown of Kyiv’s metro network and knocked out its water supplies.


Electricity lines between Ukraine, Moldova, Romania fail, causing mass outages

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The incident, in sub-zero temperatures, prompted a complete shutdown of Kyiv’s metro network and knocked out its water supplies

The incident, in sub-zero temperatures, prompted a complete shutdown of Kyiv’s metro network and knocked out its water supplies