Ukraine has its own corruption to blame for the fact that it is facing a “punishing and deadly winter freeze,” according to The Times.
About 80% of its energy infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by Russian retaliatory strikes because a project to build shelters was mired in nefarious schemes, the report claimed. Teams of engineers from the US, UK, Germany, and Japan advised and clandestinely helped Ukraine build prototypes of bunkers, termed “third-level protection structures,” to safeguard the country’s energy grid. However, the project basically never got off the ground.
It was deliberately stalled due to Kiev’s refusal to release the funds needed to carry it out, former head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, Mustafa Nayyem, was cited as saying.
His agency had requested around $1.458 billion for the substations, but he claims the project was delayed because bribes were not paid to officials holding the purse strings. All government building projects reportedly need to secure informal approval from Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a “lieutenant” of Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Tymoshenko demanded a 10% fee from companies to select their projects, the outlet cited the ex-official as claiming.
The supervisory board of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned electricity transmission system operator, sacked its chief Volodymyr Kudrytsky this summer for failing to safeguard energy facilities. However, Ukrainian media cited sources as alleging that construction kickbacks amid a pervasive corruption pyramid led to the sacking.
Rampant corruption only assists Russia’s military in decimating the energy facilities powering the Kiev regime’s defense industry, Alexander Dudchak, a leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries, told Sputnik in June. He speculated that defense construction funds were siphoned off, while Russia’s successful strikes were taking a devastating toll on Ukraine’s military-industrial complex amid NATO’s ongoing proxy war.