Ukraine plunges into darkness after power grid malfunction amid Russia's assurance to Trump on halting strikes

Emergency power outages struck multiple cities across Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova. Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Denys Shmyhal, said the blackouts resulted from a technical failure impacting the high-voltage power lines connecting Ukraine and Moldova.

He stated the malfunction “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid", activating automatic protection systems, according to AP.

The disruptions came as the Kremlin assured US President Donald Trump it would temporarily halt strikes on Kyiv until February 1.

However, officials did not directly attribute the incident to war damage, although Ukraine’s power grid has been weakened by the cumulative effects of Russian air strikes, causing severe electricity shortages in recent weeks. Ukraine’s digital ministry also confirmed that a cyberattack was not responsible, reported Reuters.

The blackout hit at least five regions in Ukraine and parts of Moldova, including the capitals Kyiv and Chisinau, following a failure at 10:42 am Kyiv time.

In Kyiv, metro services were halted and water supplies were interrupted. In Chisinau, traffic lights and some public transport were out of service, and most districts experienced power outages, the city mayor said. At a dimly lit Kyiv metro station, passengers waited, hoping the trains would soon resume service.

Officials in both countries said that power was partially restored in the early afternoon after urgent measures were taken to steady the interconnected grids.

“By evening, we will be back to where we were before the accident,” Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the independent Energy Research Centre in Kyiv, informed Reuters.

Meanwhile, Moldova's energy ministry said the disruption there was triggered by serious problems in Ukraine's grid that led to a voltage drop on the line connecting Romania and Moldova. Romania's energy ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Forecasters warn that Ukraine will face an extremely cold spell continuing into next week. In some regions, temperatures are expected to fall as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.

However, many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreements over the future of occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are important issues delaying a peace deal, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev stated on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, a location where Russian and US negotiators have previously held talks. Russian state news agencies later reported that he was meeting with an “American delegation", but offered no additional details.

Russia carried out strikes on Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday, but there were no attacks on those facilities overnight, Zelensky mentioned on Friday.

In a separate social media post, Zelensky said Russia has shifted its focus to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, adding that Russian drones and missiles struck residential areas across Ukraine overnight, a pattern seen on most nights during the war.

(With inputs from agencies)