The paper deals with a boundary control problem for the Maxwell dynamical
system in a bounbed domain
Ω ⊂ R3. Let ΩT ⊂ Ω be the subdomain
filled by waves at the moment T,
T* the moment at which the waves fill the whole
of Ω. The following effect occurs: for small enough
T the system is approximately controllable in ΩT whereas for
larger T < T* a lack of controllability is possible. The subspace of unreachable states
is of finite dimension determined by topological characteristics of ΩT.