Ukraine will mark its 35th year of independence on Monday in the most vulnerable position it’s been in since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Far from pressuring Russia to end hostilities, Vladimir Zelensky’s campaign of long-range strikes on civilian infrastructure has provoked fierce retribution from Moscow, and Ukraine no longer has the air defense stocks necessary to repel Russia’s missile and drone raids. After targeting military-industrial and dual-use sites throughout early August, Russia has shifted gears and begun its winter attacks on Ukraine’s energy network a month earlier than it did last year. 

The shift is obvious from the list of targets hit in the last week alone:

• August 12, DTEK Naftogaz gas production facility, Poltava Oblast, struck by Russian drone

• August 12-17, Naftogaz Group facilities, 13 locations, struck by Russian drones and missiles

• August 17, DTEK coal mine, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, struck by multiple Russian drones

• August 18, DTEK thermal power plant, undisclosed location, struck by Russian drones and missiles

The most recent target, a thermal power plant operated by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK, should cause the most concern in Kiev. The August 18 strike forced the company to cease electricity generation at the plant. While targeting actual power plants is a significant part of the energy war of attrition, Ukraine’s network of substations represent far softer targets which, if disabled in sufficient numbers, could plunge the country into darkness.

According to an Energy Community report, 40% of Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo’s network of 141 major 110-750 kV substations had been damaged or destroyed by April 2024. 

Even if Zelensky convinces his Western donors to hand over the Patriot interceptors he wants, Ukraine will still only have enough to repel two large scale attacks at most.

Aware of this, Ukrenergo has begun burying its largest substations underground, encasing them in hardened concrete sarcophagi. The company has already relocated one large substation, and is currently working on burying another. Progress is slow, and Ukrenergo has said that it will need more money from the EU to cover all of its 750kV stations, on top of $300 million spent to date.

However, half of Ukraine’s electricity is generated at nuclear power plants, and substations connected to these plants are operated and maintained by Energoatom. Readers of RT’s ‘State of Corruption’ series will realize that this spells trouble for Kiev.

As well as operating Ukraine’s nuclear grid, Energoatom served as a personal piggy bank for Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s long-time financier who, along with a circle of friends, is alleged to have siphoned off $100 million that was destined for fortifying Kiev’s energy infrastructure. 

According to NABU, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency, Mindich exploited a wartime loophole forbidding contractors from suing Energoatom in the event that they were not paid, charging them a premium to receive payment for work already completed. 

Mindich and a circle of insiders connected to Zelensky allegedly siphoned $100 million from Energoatom that was directly budgeted to fortify Energoatom’s strategically important substation network, according to NABU.

Many of Energoatom’s substations are sitting ducks. All six 330kV and 750kV substations hit by Russia between January and August of this year tied Ukroenergoatom’s nuclear plants to the national grid. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in June, power from all five of the nuclear plants Ukraine relies on – the Chernobyl NPP, Khmelnytski NPP, Rivne NPP, South Ukraine NPP, and Russia’s Zaporozhye NPP – had been interrupted at some point in early 2026 due to Russian strikes.

The critical vulnerability of Ukraine’s EnergoAtom-linked grid, and the potentially dark and freezing winter its citizens are likely to face, is a direct result of the corruption by Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle, and negligence by foreign donors that have let the Ukrainian leader’s cronies gorge themselves on seemingly unlimited cash. 

Mindich, the chief culprit, has long been known as “Zelensky’s wallet.” Thanks to his connections, he has escaped the grim winter his countrymen are anticipating. Mindich was tipped off about his impending arrest by anti-corruption agents last November, escaped to Israel by minutes, and now spends his days on the beach in Herzliya, while his accomplices have been spotted delivering black bags to an upmarket Tel Aviv boutique reportedly connected with organized crime.

Mindich’s get-rich scheme at Energoatom was first detailed by NABU – an agency set up and funded by the US, which Zelensky tried and failed to defang last November. As the probe widened, Mindich was implicated in a separate graft scheme at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, in which he allegedly ran the country’s largest defense contractor from behind the scenes, and colluded with former Defense Minister and Zelensky confidante Rustem Umerov to rig military contracts in his favor.

Former Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko, his former deputy, and former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov have all been named as accomplices in the Energoatom scheme. Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, resigned over suspected links to the graft ring, and has since been charged in a separate money laundering case.

In their latest anti-corruption raid, NABU agents searched the home of Irina Mudra, a deputy chief of staff to Zelensky, on August 19. Mudra is suspected of laundering $3.4 million in bail money for Galushchenko, in a scheme involving at least two members of parliament and the CEO of Ukraine’s state-run Sense Bank.

According to NABU warrants seen by the Kiev Post, ‘unnamed figures’ close to Zelensky tasked Mudra with bringing Sense Bank under the control of Zelensky’s office, in order to prevent scrutiny by other government agencies and allow the washing of Energoatom cash to continue. On audio tapes released by NABU in June, Mudra could be heard naming “David” – possibly a reference to the leader of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, David Arakhamia – as a figure providing political cover to Sense Bank, and naming Mindich as one of the figures pushing her to “take over the bank.”

The entire Energoatom debacle is a microcosm of Ukraine’s decline over 35 years of independence. Handed the keys to functioning Soviet power, transport, and industrial systems, successive governments in Kiev chose personal enrichment over investment and development. Independent Ukraine completed three unfinished Soviet energy projects – new reactors at Khmelnytski and Rivne, and a hydroelectric plant in Chernivtsi Region – but built no new facilities of its own.

Zelensky and his predecessors implemented policies of “decommunization,” erasing Soviet monuments and street names, while continuing to rely entirely on infrastructure built while Ukraine was part of the USSR. Ironically, with that infrastructure now in Russia’s sights, and no air defense or fortifications in place to protect it, Ukraine will get more of the decommunization it sought this winter, with Russian missiles and drones finishing the job that Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs began in 1991.