Ukraine and Moldova hit by major blackout after power line failures

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal has detailed the causes of a major power outage that struck parts of Ukraine and disrupted electricity supplies in neighbouring Moldova.

Writing on social media, as reported by Caliber.Az, Shmyhal said the incident occurred at 10:42 a.m. Kyiv time and was triggered by a technical malfunction involving the simultaneous shutdown of two key transmission lines. These included a 400-kilovolt line linking the power systems of Romania and Moldova, as well as a 750-kilovolt line connecting western and central regions of Ukraine.

He explained that the outages caused a cascading failure across Ukraine’s electricity grid, activating automatic protection systems at multiple substations.

Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu also commented on the situation in a Facebook post, confirming that the country experienced a partial blackout as a result of the disruption in Ukraine.

Junghietu said power supply in Moldova is expected to be fully restored within one to two hours and assured the public that technical teams are already working to resolve the consequences of the incident.

According to him, the loss of several transmission lines on Ukrainian territory triggered Moldova’s automatic protection mechanisms, leading to the partial power outage.

“This caused the frequency in Moldova’s national power system to fall to 48 hertz, which activated the automatic grid protection system and resulted in a partial blackout across the country,” Junghietu said.

By Tamilla Hasanova