A Russian missile barrage has plunged Ukraine into darkness as winter approaches but could have been avoided. Money earmarked to build effective defences against Russia’s sustained missile attacks was stolen, leaving them defenceless, Euromaidan Press reports.

Kyiv residents are facing 12-16 hour blackouts after some of the most massive drone and missile attacks of the war in the last week that are targeting the surviving non-nuclear power stations and distribution infrastructure.

However, Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) launched a programme to protect its energy assets with defences that, where they were built, proved to be effective. However, after more than $100mn was siphoned off in the Energoatom kickback scheme exposed by National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on November 10, orchestrated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former business partner and good friend, Timur Mindich, money earmarked to build more defences was stolen and those defences at dozens of facilities were never built. That left power plants and infrastructure across the country vulnerable to the Russian attacks, which have now been put out of action just before the winter snows arrive.

The scandal will badly affect Western donor sentiment as following the start of the campaign to take out power plants started last year, Ukraine’s supporters have rushed hundreds of millions of dollars to Kyiv to rebuild or repair generation capacity. Now they are discovering that a large share of this money ended up in the pocket of powerful businessmen close to the president.

In summer 2023 after Russia launched its campaign to take out Ukraine’s power stations, authorities identified several hundred critical infrastructure objects requiring protection—not just those belonging to the state-owned utility company Ukrenergo substations, but power plants, gas infrastructure, and other essential facilities.

Under former Ukrenergo chief Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of the state-owned power company secured €1.5bn in Western aid over 18 months to build concrete shelters to defend Ukrenergo’s critical transformers – the largest recipient of Western aid after the state itself.

“Under Kudrytskyi's leadership, Ukrenergo partnered with the government's Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure to construct approximately 60 anti-drone shelters for critical transformers by September 2024. These massive concrete structures—up to 25 metres tall—were designed specifically to withstand mass Iranian Shahed drone strikes,” Euromaidan Press reports.

They were tested by Russian attacks and nearly all survived repeated Russian missile and drone strikes. According to the Verkhovna Rada's temporary investigative commission, of 74 protected objects built by Ukrenergo and the Agency, only one autotransformer was destroyed by a direct hit from a heavy missile.

The programme was supposed to be extended to cover more critical distribution infrastructure belonging to the state-owned nuclear power utility Energoatom, but the money to pay for the work disappeared, Euromaidan Press reports.

When Kudrytskyi pushed back against the corruption, publicly criticising then Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko for failing to implement the infrastructure protection plan, he found himself under investigation for fraud by the authorities for a fence project that never happened, according to Euromaidan Press. He was sacked in September 2024.

“The political prosecution triggered a predictable response: Western donors withdrew, international funding collapsed to 5-10% of previous levels, and critical infrastructure went unprotected,” the publication reports.

The end of the defence programme proved to be especially catastrophic for Energoatom, where defence works had yet to begin leaving substations and thermal plants unprotected, which became easy pretty for Russian missiles.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center, told Suspilne that this loss of international backing is directly responsible for the severity of current blackouts that should have been largely avoidable.

“Current blackouts stem from this dual institutional failure: corruption preventing infrastructure protection, political vendetta destroying donor confidence. Ukraine built the solution, proved it worked, then officials chose kickbacks over replication—and prosecuted the executive who delivered results,” Euromaidan reports.

At a time when Western aid to fund the reconstruction of the battered power sector is crucial to get Ukraine through its freezing winters, international aid for Ukrenergo dropped to just 5-10% of previous levels after Kudrytskyi's dismissal.

Investigators identified businessman Mindich as the principal coordinator of the Energoatom kickback scheme, but now Justice Minister and then Energy Minister Halushchenko was also a central figure, appearing in NABU’s recordings under the codename "Professor."

Zelenskiy demanded Halushchenko's resignation days after the scandal broke, but he remains at liberty and no formal charges have been brought against him yet. Zelenskiy is already receiving flak from critics for protecting members of his inner circle in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.

Kudrytskyi's dismissal from Ukrenergo triggered a financial crisis at the company. The company Ukrenergo failed to include its Eurobonds in a restructuring deal coordinated with Ukraine's sovereign debt restructuring, pushing the company into technical default. Now the company is cut off from the international capital markets and will be unable to raise fresh capital should access to those markets reopen.