Power outages have been reported in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and several other cities across the country.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on social media that due to the outages, the Kyiv metro system had been suspended, and that metro stations are currently able to function as shelters using backup power supplies.
Pointing out that similar outages have occurred in different cities across the country, Klitschko said,
“Emergency power outages have occurred in Kyiv, as in many cities of Ukraine.”
According to local media reports, water supply disruptions were also reported in Kyiv and surrounding regions.
Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal said in a written statement that a “technological failure” occurred after a 400-kilovolt power line between the energy systems of Romania and Moldova and a 750-kilovolt line between western and central Ukraine went offline simultaneously at around 10:45 a.m.
“This situation led to cascading outages in Ukraine’s power grid and the activation of automatic protection systems at substations. Units at nuclear power plants were taken offline,” Shmyhal said, adding that emergency power cuts were implemented in Kyiv as well as in the Kharkiv and Zhytomyr regions.
Shmyhal noted that efforts are ongoing to resolve the energy issue in the coming hours.