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Extraordinary power outages also affected several Ukrainian citiesneighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid the Kremlin’s pledge to US President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kiev as Ukraine grapples with one of its darkest winters in years.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said the outages were caused by a technical fault in the transmission lines connecting Ukraine and Moldova.
The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” activating automatic protection systems, he said.
Power outages were recorded in Kyiv, as well as in the Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country.
The outage cut off water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended due to low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of transmission lines on the territory of Ukraine, an automatic protection system was activated, which cut off the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a Facebook post.
“I encourage residents to remain calm until power is restored.”
A colder winter than usual
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s already crippled power grid, causing prolonged, severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water during the war, in a strategy Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia used similar tactics during its nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures have dropped more than usual this winter, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold spell that will stretch into next week. Temperatures are expected in some areas fall to –30 C, Ukrainian state Emethe emergency services said.
Trump said late Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kiev and other Ukrainian cities because of the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kiev and cities and towns for a week during this … extraordinary cold,” Trump said dholding a cabinet meetingng in the White House. Putin “agreed to it,” he said, without specifying when the request was made to the Russian leader.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking clarity on the scope and timing of the limited pause.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “personally asked” Putin to stop targeting Kiev by Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials are expected to take place in Abu Dhabi next week.
The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that Trump administration officials met simultaneously with negotiators from Ukraine and Russia. However, it is not clear how many obstacles to peace remain.
Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory and Moscow’s claim to possession of unoccupied territory are key issues holding back a peace deal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media on Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and American negotiators were previously held.
Russian state news agencies later reported that he had met with an “American delegation” but gave no further details.
A break in the shots
Russia hit Ukrainian energy facilities in several regions on Thursday, but there were no attacks on those facilities overnight, Zelenskyy said on Friday.
In a social media post, the Ukrainian leader also noted that Russia had turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks and that Russian drones and missiles had hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they do most nights during the war.
US President Donald Trump says he has convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt attacks on Ukraine’s power grid during one of the coldest winters in years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Russia had simply shifted to other goals.
Trump described Putin’s acceptance of a pause in the strikes as a concession.
But Zelenskyy was skeptical, as the Russian invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on February 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite US-led efforts to end the fighting.
“I don’t believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a lot of evidence to the contrary,” Zelenskyy said on Thursday.
On Saturday, on the streets of Kyiv, many Ukrainians shared Zelensky’s skepticism.
On the banks of the Dnieper River in the northern part of the city, several hundred people gathered to relax and enjoy a DJ set. The river is frozen enough that people can run, dance and ride sleds on its surface.
Some brought their dogs and others organized picnics and fired up the barbecue. At the same time, their homes remain cold, often without water or electricity.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Serhii Kupov, 57, said he did not believe peace could be achieved through negotiations because Russia was “making unrealistic demands.”
Gathered around a small camping table, Kupov and his friends raised glasses of alcohol and said they were ready to endure the temporary lack of heating in their homes.
Albina Sokur (35) has also been without heating for almost three weeks. She is the mother of a six-year-old and is originally from Donetsk, a city that Russia occupied in 2014 at the beginning of its military aggression against Ukraine.
She said that despite the constant instability, she still tries to live life “to the fullest”.
Sokur said she hopes that peace will be achieved through negotiations, but that she does not believe she will ever be able to return home.
“I think there could only be a front line freeze, as it was before 2022… It would only give the other side time to strengthen. This needs to end once and for all,” she said.
