“Kyiv was hit the hardest,” Zelensky said, naming a likely cause of the blackout

The likely cause of a major accident in Ukraine’s power system—which led to large-scale outages across the country—was the weather, specifically ice-covered power lines.

This was reported by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to the president, the investigation is ongoing, but no signs of external interference or a cyberattack have been found.

“A technological incident occurred on the network this morning. Two lines—between Romania and Moldova and on the territory of Ukraine—stopped working. The reasons are being investigated in detail. As of now, there is no confirmation of external interference or cyberattacks. There is more evidence that, due to weather conditions, the lines became iced over and an automatic shutdown occurred,” the president said.

He noted that the situation is currently most difficult in Kyiv, and that the blackout also affected the central and eastern parts of the country. Overall, he said, the power system has been brought back to the state it was in before the accident. Stabilization and restoration are continuing.

As media previously reported, large emergency power outages occurred in various Ukrainian cities, temporarily stopping electric transport: in Kyiv and Kharkiv, metro train service and escalators were halted; in other cities, trolleybuses and suburban electric trains were not running.

Former Ukrenergo head Volodymyr Kudrytskyi noted that the mass power outages in Ukraine on January 31 were the result of a serious cascading failure in the power system, but technically it was not a nationwide blackout. He said similar incidents have occurred after 2022, and the final causes will only become clear after technical analysis.