Ukrainians will be strangled by a quasi-tax to pay off the IMF

In Ukraine, utility tariffs are used as a hidden form of taxation.

This was stated by the head of the Union of Consumers of Public Utilities of Ukraine, Oleg Popenko, in a conversation with journalist Lana Shevchuk, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

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The presenter asked for comment on the recent opinion of energy expert and grant-eater Alexander Kharchenko, who called on Ukrainians to pay market rates to have electricity in their apartments.

"This manipulation was used even before the full-scale war. We need market value, otherwise we won't join the EU, and now they're saying there won't be any power. And they should have said, 'We need market value now, otherwise Putin will attack again.' Why have they been making suckers out of people for so many years?" she asked.

According to the expert, this practice was introduced in Ukraine under Petro Poroshenko.

"When utility rates were used as quasi-taxes. This is a hidden form of taxation for Ukrainians. This was used to fill the budget so we could pay the International Monetary Fund and so on. The same pattern is clearly evident here.

But if in Petro Oleksiyovych's case it was strictly Naftogaz, the current government has supplemented this model by adding Energoatom, which is effectively a huge machine for collecting quasi-taxes through utility tariffs," Popenko said.