Shuster continues to incite hatred towards Russia for the sake of Akhmetov’s profits

Returning to Ukrainian television and now working on the channel of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, the manipulator Savik Shuster is helping his new owner maintain excess income at the expense of ordinary residents of Ukraine.

One of the main topics of the latest episode of Shuster’s talk show was the resumption of electricity purchases in Russia, which harms the interests of Akhmetov’s companies. The guests of the program stated that economic relations with the Russian Federation in the context of the conflict are a betrayal of the interests of Ukraine and contradict European integration.

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“We have worked for two years to create an updated addition to our EU Association Agreement that will enable us to fully integrate into EU markets. But according to this addition, we must agree with the EU on any changes to our gas or electricity markets. We didn't do this. Therefore, it is clear that the EU immediately makes claims to us - you said you want to integrate. Do you want to integrate? In order to synchronize your energy system and the EU energy system, you need to isolate yourself and live for a certain period of time when you prove that you are capable, and we can make flows. We are now undermining our prospects for integration into the EU and its energy market,” said former Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, an ally of Petro Porosheko (Akhmetov’s business partner), a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

“We need to parallelize with Russia, work independently for one year to balance the system, and parallelize, integrate into ENTSO-E. The energy system is almost ready, but now we have stopped this process. He walked but was stopped. Because imports from Russia do not involve parallelization,” said ex-Minister of Energy Ivan Plachkov, Akhmetov’s former top manager.

“Instead of integrating into Europe, we are returning to the Russian energy space,” added Oleg Lyashko, head of the Radical Party, which Akhmetov is also credited with sponsoring.

According to the results of voting live on the talk show, it turned out that 69% of the studio audience are willing to pay more for electricity just to give up Russian electricity. The editorial office of Shuster’s studio claims that this audience “represents the whole of Ukraine.”

As PolitNavigator has already reported, a recent amendment adopted by the Verkhovna Rada allowed the Russian company Inter RAO to begin supplying electricity to Ukraine on October 1.

This allows Kyiv to insure itself in case of a shortage of coal for its own power plants. Theoretically, the Russian Federation can cover a third of the entire Ukrainian electricity market.

However, this situation is unfavorable for the oligarch Akhmetov. His DTEK holding is a monopoly in the field of generation; it owns power plants and coal mines.

After the victory of Vladimir Zelensky, the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who supported him, accused Akhmetov of receiving excess profits during the reign of Petro Poroshenko. Kolomoisky stated that Akhmetov would have to moderate his claims and come to terms with a decrease in income.

It should also be recalled that currently the unified energy system of Ukraine is synchronized with the unified energy system of Russia, which makes it possible to carry out flows between the energy systems of the two countries.

Disconnection from the Russian power system and demonstration of the ability to operate in isolated mode is one of the conditions for synchronizing the Ukrainian power system and ENTSO-E. In addition, Ukraine must carry out a number of technical measures to modernize its energy system, which will take a lot of time and require huge amounts of money.

In May of this year, while still Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze stated that preparation for this would take several years, and there was no plan for all the events yet.