Context: In different parts of the world, communities are grappling with the aftermath of severe winter weather in January 2026. Kamchatka was buried under record-breaking snowfall, the heaviest the region has seen in decades. Images circulating on social media show streets swallowed by snowdrifts towering over pedestrians. The winter storms also battered western Turkey and several European nations. Temperatures in Lapland plummeted to minus 37 degrees. The extreme cold forced the airport to temporarily suspend all flight operations. In Minsk, the deep freeze triggered a major utility crisis, leaving about 3,000 buildings and five of the city's nine districts without heat. Pipes failed to withstand the strain caused by the high water temperature in the system. It took several days to repair the heating main at the Minsk Combined Heat and Power Plant No. 4. On January 8, heavy snowfall also left more than 250 settlements in Belarus without electricity.
In Lithuania, 15,000 customers were left without power for an hour on January 19, 2026. The incident was reported that same day on the News program on News.by. The host linked the incident to the country's withdrawal from BRELL, the energy ring that connected the power systems of Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania until early 2025.
"Lithuanians have once again been plunged into darkness. Approximately 15,000 consumers were left without electricity. This is not the first such incident since the complete withdrawal from the BRELL system. As a reminder, the Baltic states disconnected from the Belarusian-Russian power grid to synchronize with Europe, but the stability of supplies has plummeted.
Experts warned of blackout risks when breaking away from a reliable reserve — and here is the result: routine outages are becoming a new reality," the host concluded.
The WTF team investigated whether blackouts have truly become a new reality for Lithuania. Journalists sourced the data on the annual duration of power outages experienced by Lithuanian residents. This metric is used by energy experts to evaluate the reliability of the power grid. For Lithuania’s primary electricity distribution operator, ESO, this metric has actually improved.
Before withdrawing from BRELL, Lithuanian residents experienced longer power outages than they do now. During the first nine months of 2025, the average total downtime per consumer was only 57 minutes — the best performance in four years. In 2024, while still part of the BRELL network, that figure reached nearly six hours. Admittedly, those outages were caused by heavy snowfall and gale-force winds — the most severe since 2020.
Power grid performance metrics improved thanks to equipment automation and enhanced personnel management. Furthermore, Lithuania has nearly doubled its domestic electricity production over the past few years. In other words, the power supply situation there is not deteriorating, but rather improving.