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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighbouring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to U.S. President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.
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The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.
Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the centre and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook.
“I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.”
Snow covered, damaged Russian military vehicles are on display in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
‘Weaponizing winter’
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia has used similar tactics throughout the course of its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures throughout this winter have fallen further than usual, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to -30 C, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian towns amid the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this … extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
Putin has “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request to the Russian leader was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks scheduled to discuss war
Talks are expected to take place between U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials on Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia.
However, it’s unclear how many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are a key issue holding up a peace deal, Zelenskyy said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and U.S. negotiators have previously taken place. Russian state news agencies later reported that he was meeting with an “American delegation” but did not provide further details.
Russia struck Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday but there were no strikes on those facilities overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday.
In a post on social media, Zelenskyy also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, and that Russian drones and missiles hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they have most nights during the war.
Trump has framed Putin’s acceptance of the pause in strikes as a concession. But Zelenskyy was skeptical as Russia’s invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on Feb. 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a U.S.-led push to end the fighting.
“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelenskyy said Thursday.
In the streets of Kyiv Saturday, many Ukrainians shared Zelenskyy’s skepticism.
On the banks of the Dnipro River in the northern part of the city, several hundred people gathered to unwind and enjoy a DJ set.
The river is frozen solid enough for people to run, dance and ride sleds across its surface. Some have brought their dogs, while others have set up picnics and lit grills. At the same time, their homes remain cold, often without water or electricity.
People who have no power at home following Russia’s air attacks wait in line to receive free hot meals in a residential neighbourhood in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Speaking with The Associated Press, Serhii Kupov, 57, said he did not believe peace could be achieved through negotiations as Russia was “putting forward 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 nearly three weeks. She is the mother of six-year-old Tymur and is originally from Donetsk, a city Russia occupied in 2014 at the start of its military aggression against Ukraine. She says that despite the constant instability, she still tried to live life “to the fullest.”
Sokur said that she hoped peace could be achieved through negotiations, but said she did not believe that she would ever be able to return home.
“I think there could just be a freezing of the front line, like it was before 2022 … It would only give the other side time to build up strength. This needs to be finished once and for all,” she said.
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