The Russian-installed Kherson administration blamed Ukraine for the failure and accused it of attacking the Kakhovka dam.
The Russian-installed administration in Ukraine’s Kherson region said the city of Kherson lost water and electricity supplies after what it called an “act of sabotage.”
In a statement on Telegram, the Russian-installed Kherson administration said a “terrorist attack” had damaged three power lines in the region.
It said the attack was carried out by Ukraine, although it provided no evidence.
The failures were “the result of an attack on the Berislav-Kakhovka highway organized by the Ukrainian side, in which three concrete pylons of high-voltage power lines were damaged,” it said.
It is the first time that Kherson – which fell to Russian forces within days of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February – has experienced such a power outage.
Kherson is one of four regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month.
Russian state news agency TASS quoted Moscow-appointed Kherson governor Vladimir Saldo as saying there were plans to restore power to the city by the end of the day.
Energy specialists are working to solve the problem “quickly”, the Russian-backed authorities said, as they urged people to “keep calm”.
TASS separately quoted emergency services in the region as saying that 10 settlements, including the city of Kherson, which had a population of 280,000 before the war, were left without electricity.
Russian officials have repeatedly warned civilians in recent weeks not to leave Kherson amid what they say are preparations for a Ukrainian offensive against the city, the only regional capital Russia has controlled since invading Ukraine on February 24 has conquered.
News of the outage followed reports that the Kakhovka Dam in the Russian-controlled Kherson region was “damaged” by a Ukrainian strike.
“Today at 10:00 (08:00 GMT) there was a hit from six HIMARS rockets. Air defense units shot down five missiles, one hit a lock of the Kakhovka Dam, which was damaged,” Russian news agencies quoted local rescue services as saying.
RIA Novosti news agency quoted a local Moscow-backed official as saying the damage was not “critical”.
threat of flooding
The Kakhovka hydroelectric power station in southern Ukraine was captured by Moscow’s forces early in their offensive. It supplies water to Crimea annexed by Russia.
Both warring factions have been trading allegations about the Russian-held dam for weeks, said Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett.
“Ukrainians have said the Russians have mined it and intend to blow it up, while Russia said Ukrainian forces are planning to fire a missile at it,” said Fawcett, reporting from Kyiv.
But if the dam were to be breached, Fawcett said it would be a major catastrophe for both sides, “so there’s still a lot of doubt as to whether either of them really wants that.”
The dam retains 19 million cubic meters of water and is located near Kherson, Fawcett said.
Ukraine has warned in recent weeks that Moscow’s forces intend to blow up the strategic facility to cause flooding.
Russian strikes last month destroyed about a third of Ukraine’s power plants and the government has urged Ukrainians to save as much electricity as possible.
But so far Ukraine has rarely attacked Russian-held civilian power infrastructure in Moscow-annexed territory, preferring to target Russian army supply lines.
Saldo said the dam’s destruction would result in flooding of the Dnieper’s left bank.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that Russian troops had mined the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station with the intention of blowing it up.
Its destruction could result in flash flooding for hundreds of thousands of people, he warned.
He said the disruption to water supplies in the south could also affect the cooling systems at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.