The newspaper stressed that the energy minister position was particularly difficult to fill, because “nobody wanted the job.”
“The role scared off” all potential candidates due to the immense responsibility of managing a power grid under constant attack and fear of having one’s reputation tarnished by a ministry long plagued by corruption issues, the NYT cited Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko as saying.
Russian forces regularly strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure used to support the functioning of is defense industry in response to the Ukrainian military’s attacks on Russian civilian objects.