KYIV, Ukraine — Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring 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.

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 center 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.”

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 minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), 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 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.

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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Associated Press writers Kamila Hrabchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee has won a special runoff election for a vacant, deep-blue House seat in Texas, NBC News projects, besting former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards in a Democrat-versus-Democrat contest.

Menefee will fill an 11-month vacancy in the Houston-area congressional district formerly represented by Rep. Sylvester Turner until his death in March 2025. Menefee’s partial term will only run through the end of 2026, and he is already competing for a full term in a redrawn district.

After this election, the balance in the House will stand at 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats, with another two red seats and one blue seat still vacant with special elections pending later this year.

Menefee and Edwards advanced to the runoff after earning the most votes — but falling short of a majority — in a crowded, all-party November contest for Texas’ 18th Congressional District, which includes downtown Houston and surrounding parts of Harris County.

There weren’t many issues separating Menefee and Edwards, who both made affordability their key issue. The Houston Chronicle endorsed Menefee, saying both were strong candidates but that his experience as county attorney prepared him better to take on “hostile government overreach.”

Although Menefee will take the seat for the remainder of Turner’s term, he won’t stop campaigning, with the midterm elections and Texas’ March 3 primary fast approaching.

The current version of the district is changing after Texas’ Republican-led redistricting last year. Texas’ new maps come into effect for the regular 2026 election cycle, which includes the upcoming primary election on March 3 and the general election on Nov. 3, but not the special runoff election that took place on Saturday.

The primary field for the new district includes Menefee as well as longtime Democratic Rep. Al Green, whose old 9th District was converted into a Republican-leaning seat. Edwards is also among the Democratic candidates who filed for the regular primary in March.

As of Jan. 11, Menefee had outraised Edwards and had $388,000 on hand. Edwards had $280,000. At the end of September 2025, the most recent period covered by his campaign finance reports, Green had $572,000 in the bank.

Menefee is stepping into a congressional seat that saw two sitting representatives die less than a year apart, leaving it vacant for most of the last two years. Longtime Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s death in July 2024 left it empty until her daughter Erica Lee Carter was sworn in to complete the remainder of Jackson Lee’s term in November of that year. Turner then took office in January 2025 but died only months later.

The district has had a Black representative for more than 50 years, starting with Barbara Jordan in 1973, who was the first Southern Black woman elected to the House of Representatives.