And earlier this week, Ukraine accused Russia of launching a cyber-attack that targeted two banks and its defence ministry on Wednesday.
James Lewis, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies: “The Russians are the best in the world in this type of warfare and they have the advantage that they built all the networks and utilities in Ukraine.
“The really effective stuff is held in reserve by GRU. We haven’t yet seen a serious effort at cyberwarfare against Ukraine. If they wanted they could turn off the country’s electrical power, disrupt every network and cause havoc.”
But the latest news of blackouts also came just moments after Mr Scholz committed to cancelling plans for a much-wanted gas project Germany had originally struck with Russia when Angela Merkel was in charge.
Nord Stream 2 would have transported gas from Russia to Germany, bypassing Poland and Ukraine on its route through the Baltic Sea.
Mr Scholz was faced with a wave of calls to scrap the project, which would have doubled Russia’s gas exports to Europe, to discourage Mr Putin from invading Ukraine.
The Biden Administration claimed that threatening to scrap the pipeline would give the West “leverage” over Russia.
But the move may have backfired.
Danil Bochkov, from the Russian International Affairs Council, told Express.co.uk: “The impact will be substantial not only on Germany but on the whole EU since it could not diversify supplies that fast.
“But this is going to be more of a mid-term impact because NS2 has not been launched yet, so Berlin was not relying on its as a source of gas supply.
“The expectation of the NS2 launch which was expected to supply vast amounts of gas could stabilize market energy prices over time. Now, the gas and oil prices are most likely to keep climbing worldwide, because Germany and Europe would struggle hard to find a substitute supporter capable of delivering the same amount of gas. If it could at all.”
Mr Scholz said in his announcement: “In light of the most recent developments we must reassess the situation in particular regarding Nord Stream 2.”
“The appropriate departments of the economy ministry will make a new assessment of the security of our supply in light of what has changed in the last few days.”
It is also expected that more harsh sanctions will follow as Russia has shown signs of ramping up its military aggression.
Tensions soared last night when Mr Putin announced that he recognises two regions in Ukraine as breakaway regions and not part of the country.
The decree signed by the Russian President recognised the independence of the self-declared people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
This is where Russian-backed rebels have been in conflict with Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Source: The Epochtimes