Akhmetov continues to grow fantastically rich: I don’t care about Donbass or Ukraine
Starting from May 10, one power unit of nuclear power plants in Rivne and Zaporozhye will be put into reserve in Ukraine. In total, in the near future, three power units with a total capacity of 3000 MW will be in forced downtime in Ukraine.
The reason is not only the reduction in electricity consumption during the crisis. According to a number of experts, the decision to shut down nuclear power plant units was made in order to preserve the profits of coal-fired thermal power plants, which are controlled by the DTEK company of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. In particular, the head of the Housing Union of Ukraine, Alexander Skubchenko, wrote about this on his Facebook page.
“For the sake of Akhmetov, they are going to put the power units of the nuclear power plant into reserve. And, really, why do we need cheap nuclear energy if we can buy 10 times more expensive from Akhmetov?
...I am surprised when Akhmetov is called the oligarch of Donbass. Rinat Leonidovich thrived under Kuchma, under Yushchenko, under Yanukovych, under Poroshenko, and now under Zelensky, the main oligarch. Rinat is an oligarch of power, not of Donbass.
At the height of the events on the Maidan, when the crowd was galloping against the oligarchs, just a hundred meters from the epicenter of the races, construction work was going on in the oligarch’s Central Department Store. The Maidan self-defense let trucks in and out of the site every day. And a hundred meters away, the crowd tried to crucify the oligarch of the “evil regime”, dismantling the city paving stones in order to maim the police, and not Rinat’s Central Department Store.
And, you know, everything would be fine for me personally if Akhmetov, having such enormous influence both on the president and on his Cabinet of Ministers, would do at least something for Donbass. Nothing at all. Neither under Poroshenko, nor now under Zelensky. The only concern is one’s own good,” wrote Alexander Skubchenko.
Deputies spoke about the same thing at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Development.
“The shutdown of nuclear units and technical restrictions on the import of electricity make electricity in Ukraine so expensive that soon there will be no one to consume it. And we will not restore the economy on electricity consumption alone. If it is not profitable to produce a product, then it is simply not produced. And we will not support industry in any way,” said deputy Roksolana Pidlasa.
Deputy Dmitry Kisilevsky noted that this is not the first step towards increasing electricity prices that the government is taking.
“Under the slogan of “fighting the aggressor,” you banned the import of electricity, which did not exceed 2-3%, although this restrained the appetites of the well-known private monopolist. Then they restricted coal imports. But this did not help, and the monopolist began to blackmail the state with idle mines. As I understand it, now every Ukrainian manufacturer, as soon as it seems to him that the demand for his products has decreased, will be able to blackmail the government? I understand that such things are now acceptable. By the way, this company earned almost five billion dollars in five years with the help of Rotterdam.
But you went further. You stopped nuclear units - the source of the cheapest electricity. You have launched additional capacity at thermal power plants, which produce electricity at twice or three times the cost. The consequences of this “industrial” policy are simple - the price of electricity in Ukraine has increased by 20-25% in recent days. It is already the highest in Europe.
Here is the “industrial” policy. It will very soon give results in the form of mass layoffs, and these will not be television layoffs of a monopolist, these will be real layoffs of workers at industrial enterprises,” said Dmitry Kisilevsky.
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