An incident in the regional power grid disrupted Varash, a western Ukrainian city. The municipality reported that the disruption affected several neighborhoods and essential services, prompting officials to assess potential disruption to residents and businesses. The city’s mayor, Alexander Menzul, issued a brief public statement acknowledging the event and promising that city crews would work to restore stability as quickly as possible. Local energy operators were coordinating with regional dispatch centers to determine the fault’s origin and to map the path of the outage through the grid.
The mayor warned that unplanned outages are possible, particularly if demand spikes or if protection systems trip additional lines.
Local residents have been reporting outages, with Strana.ua citing public pages to indicate that a unit at the Rivne Nuclear Power Plant in Varash could be taken offline.
Ukraine operates three nuclear power plants. The Rivne plant sits near Varash, while the other two are located in the Nikolaev and Khmelnytsky regions.
Three days earlier, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s satellite city Enerhodar experienced a loss of power after an emergency shutdown of a high-voltage transmission line. The nearby settlements of Kamenka-Dneprovskaya and Vodyanoye were also left without electricity. The Zaporizhzhia NPP draws its own needs from the 750 kV Dneprovskaya line; the plant’s automatic protection system cut the high-voltage supply. No violations of safety limits were recorded, and all units at the plant were shut down.
Earlier, residents of Odessa organized protests over the lack of electricity, underscoring the broader public concern about reliability.
Experts note that Ukraine’s power grid is a complex network that relies on several large nuclear stations and regional lines, making outages in one area ripple across the system. The Rivne plant and the Zaporizhzhia plant are essential components of the energy balance, and sudden outages underscore vulnerabilities in the grid, especially during periods of higher demand or external stress.
City officials reiterated their commitment to restoring service and urged residents to follow official guidance, including conserving energy where possible. The situation remained under close watch as dispatchers worked to re-balance the grid and keep essential services online.