Oleg Popenko announced Kharkiv’s debts for electricity and questioned the management decisions at Ukrenergo.
3 March 19:55
In an interview with the YouTube channel "Komersant Ukrainian", Oleg Popenko, head of the Union of Utility Consumers, made a series of sensational statements about the work of Ukrenergo, the situation with electricity payments in Kharkiv, and the financial policy of state-owned companies.
Popenko emphasized that Ukrenergo does not sell electricity as a commodity, but receives funds exclusively for its transmission.
“Ukrenergo does not receive funds for generating electricity. They only receive funds for transmission. In the business’s electricity bill, there is 7, 8, or 10 hryvnia for transmission. There is a certain amount of manipulation here.”
According to him, the share of the transmission tariff in the final cost of electricity is significantly lower than what is presented in the public sphere.
Kharkiv: free travel and billions in debt
Popenko paid special attention to the situation in Kharkiv, stating that the city does not actually pay the full amount for electricity.
“The metro in Kharkiv does not pay for electricity, nor does the water utility. The debts there amount to one billion or one and a half billion.”
At the same time, he acknowledged the complexity of the situation in the frontline city:
“Twenty kilometers from the front line, people were given free travel to keep them in the city. Whether this is right is another question.”
Popenko also raised the question of the legal response from the energy industry’s leadership — whether lawsuits had been filed against the city authorities to recover the debt.
A separate block of criticism concerned the period of Vladimir Kudritsky’s leadership. Popenko stated that for eight months, companies allegedly supplied electricity from the occupied territories, and there were 74 such structures. He called these statements a question of managerial responsibility.
