KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency power outages hit several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, with the Kremlin promising U.S. President Donald Trump a pause in attacks on Kyiv as the country grapples with one of its coldest winters in years.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denis Shmyhal said the outage was caused by a technical fault in the power lines connecting Ukraine and Moldova.
He said the failure “caused a cascading blackout on Ukraine’s power grid” and triggered automatic protection systems.
Power outages were reported in Kiev and in the Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions in the center and northeast of the country. Officials said the power outage disrupted the Ukrainian capital’s water supply, while the city’s subway system was temporarily halted due to low grid voltage.
Moldova also experienced severe power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to a power outage in Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, causing an interruption in the power supply,” Moldovan Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a Facebook post. “I encourage people to remain calm until the power is restored.”
Weaponizing Winter
The massive blackout comes after weeks of Russian crackdowns on Ukraine’s already troubled energy grid, triggering chronic and severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians access to heat, light and running water during the war, a strategy Ukrainian officials have called “weaponizing winter.”
Although Russia has used similar tactics during its nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures have dropped more than normal this winter, causing widespread hardship for civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a severe cold spell that will last into next week. Ukraine’s state emergency service said temperatures would drop to -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to temporarily halt attacks on Kiev and other Ukrainian towns amid extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to open fire on Kiev and towns during this…unusually cold week,” Trump told a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Putin “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request was made to the Russian leader.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification on the scope and length of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv by Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials are expected to hold talks on February 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January, the first time Trump administration officials met with Ukrainian and Russian negotiators simultaneously. However, it is not clear that many obstacles to peace remain. Zelensky on Thursday said disagreements over the handling of occupied Ukrainian territory and Moscow’s claims to territories it does not occupy were key issues holding up a peace deal.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media on Saturday that he was in Miami, where Russian and U.S. negotiators had previously held talks.
Russia attacked energy assets in several regions of Ukraine on Thursday but did not launch an attack on the facilities overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.
Zelensky’s social media post also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, with Russian drones and missiles striking Ukrainian residential areas overnight, as it did most nights during the war.
Trump viewed Putin’s acceptance of the strike suspension as a concession. But Zelensky is skeptical because February 24 marks the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion and there are no signs that Moscow is willing to reach a peaceful solution despite a U.S.-led push to end the fighting.
“I don’t think Russia wants to end the war. There’s a lot of evidence that that’s not the case,” Zelensky said Thursday.
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Associated Press writer Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed.
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