Ukraine's national electricity distributor Ukrenerho announced on July 16 that emergency shutdowns will continue in several regions amid difficulties caused by ongoing Russian attacks on power infrastructure and a spell of hot weather that has pushed consumption to record levels.
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Ukrenerho said that the equipment at one of its energy facilities failed overnight, further reducing production capacity.
Four rounds of electricity shutdowns are scheduled for July 16, with the first one starting at 10 a.m. local time, Ukrenerho said in a statement on Telegram.
"The emergency shutdowns are scheduled throughout the day in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kirovohrad regions," Ukrenerho said, adding that work was already under way to repair the affected energy facility, without specifying its location.
Ukrenerho stepped up the use of rolling blackouts to consumers as recently as last month with Russia increasingly targeting infrastructure using missile and drone attacks.
A heat wave that has seen temperatures of up to 40 Celsius and above in many places on the European continent has also impacted consumption in Ukraine.
The latest round of rolling blackouts comes a day after 446 cities, towns, and villages in six Ukrainian regions were cut off due to weather conditions.
Amid stepped-up Russian air attacks on power and cities, Ukrainian drones have struck deeper inside Russia, damaging energy facilities critical for Moscow's military effort, mainly oil installations.
On July 16, the interim governor of Russia's Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, Aleksei Smirnov, said a Ukrainian drone strike had set an electric equipment plant on fire in the town of Korenevo, located some 25 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
"None of the workers were injured," Smirnov said, adding, that the blaze at the low-voltage equipment plant was extinguished by fire crews.
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Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down 13 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one drone over the Kursk region. Ukraine has not commented on the Russian claims.
In a separate development, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced on July 16 that their power-grid operators have signed an agreement to separate from the Soviet-era joint power grid known as BRELL, which is controlled by its Russian operators.
The agreement was announced by Lithuania's Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys.