Contracts for the protection of substations in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions remained on paper

The program to protect key power substations in Ukraine's southern regions from Russian shelling has actually failed in two years. From 2023 to 2024, only two out of twenty large contracts signed by Ukrenergo and the State Agency for Infrastructure Restoration were implemented in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.

This was reported by Nikcenter.

NPC Ukrenergo and the agency had the right to enter into secret agreements without tenders and publication of the terms, but due to lack of funding and organizational problems, most of the work has not been completed. The third level of protection, which included complex shelters and concrete structures at 22 key substations, remained mostly on paper.

In Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, six substations were planned to be protected. The Mykolaiv agency signed two classified agreements worth UAH 1.9 billion and UAH 243 million, and the Odesa agency signed four contracts worth more than UAH 5 billion. As of October 2025, none of these agreements has been fulfilled, and the implementation deadlines have been repeatedly postponed.

Separately, Ukrenergo has procured transformer protection for 330 KW substations. During the first wave in 2023, 14 contracts were signed, all of them classified and supposed to be completed by early 2024, but the deadlines were postponed, four contracts were terminated with payment for the actual work performed, and the rest were postponed to 2025.

Nayyem, the former head of the Infrastructure Recovery Agency, claimed that the Cabinet of Ministers was artificially delaying funding for energy protection projects by blocking the payment of almost €150 million from the European Commission. MP Oleksiy Kucherenko showed one of the power substations, where work has been going on since the summer of 2023: the facility has not been completed, the completion date has been postponed eight times, contractors have been changed three times, and the estimate has increased significantly.

The SBU suspects that officials of the Mykolaiv Regional Electricity Administration, together with IKAD LLC, may have misappropriated UAH 9.6 million allocated to protect power substations from the Shahed. One of the suspects, the director of the State Enterprise "Agency of Local Roads of Mykolaiv Region" Ivan Yanchenko, is still in office, and no measure of restraint has been imposed on him.

Thus, preparations in the southern regions for possible new Russian attacks on energy infrastructure on the eve of winter leave many questions, and most protection measures remain unimplemented.

On October 11, a part of the population of Odesa region was left without electricity and gas after a night of Russian shelling. Power companies have already restored supply to 52,500 customers, while about 25,000 customers were left without electricity.

Анна Бальчінос