More than 86,500 residents in Makhachkhala, Daghestan, have been left without electricity after a fire broke out at a substation.
The blackout began on Saturday morning when a fire broke out at the Novaya substation, cutting tens of thousands off from electricity in the capital, according to the republic’s Energy Ministry.
Officials stated that the fire broke out because of a technical failure from power lines being overloaded, damaging a total of 23 cable lines.
According to the Russian Energy Ministry, the situation is now under control. Over 45 emergency teams were deployed to the site, including 159 workers and 71 units of equipment from the central North Caucasus energy company, Rossetti North Caucasus, and its regional headquarters in Daghestan, DaghEnergo.
Authorities said that power was restored to nearly half of those affected by the blackout, with the authorities reporting that full power supply had been reinstated. Repair work to replace damaged cables and restore the infrastructure is still ongoing.
The Head of Daghestan, Sergei Melikov, pledged that the republic’s residents would have the necessary power supply to ensure a good standard of living for residents.
In a statement published on his Telegram channel, he wrote: ‘All I can promise our people is that we will not stop, and I will not give up until reliable electricity becomes a natural condition of your lives’.
Melikov added that the authorities must increase oversight of the situation and that DaghEnergo must change the way it interacts with the public.
Daghestani Prime Minister Abdulmuslim Abdulmuslimov, said that over the past two weeks, the region’s energy system has been overloaded beyond its capacity six times. According to him, this overload directly led to the fire at the Novaya substation.
Abdulmuslimov said that from 1–24 July, 199 emergency power cuts occurred in the republic, in Makhachkala – 75.
The incident has once again highlighted Daghestan’s ongoing energy crisis. Despite routine maintenance and repair work, the ageing infrastructure continues to fail during peak usage periods. Modernisation of the power grid remains slow: no sufficient federal funding has been allocated so far, and the current reform programme is only scheduled to be implemented by 2036.
Daghestan remains one of the most energy-deficient regions in Russia. According to official statistics, losses in transmission networks reach up to 30%–33%, and only around 8% of electricity is used by industry — the majority goes to household consumption.
Despite extensive regional modernisation programmes — including the replacement of more than 2,500 power line poles in Makhachkala, upgrading transformer capacity, and modernising infrastructure — power outages remain frequent.
In November 2024, local media reported major blackouts were affecting up to 90,000 residents — in those cases, severe weather conditions were cited as the primary cause.
Residents of Daghestan regularly protest against persistent power cuts.
Elizaveta Chukharova
