Russia mobilizes fifth column in Ukraine to attack energy independence

On 9 September in the centre of Kiev, 25 officers from General Prosecutor's office and Directorate for Combating Organized Crime conducted a raid on the offices of Ukraine's biggest producer of energy - the state-owned enterprise Energoatom.

The reason for the raid was speciously to obtain evidence relating to allegations of fraud and corruption by the company's officers committed between 2012 and 2014.

Commenting on the raid, a spokesman for Energoatom stated that its operations are fully transparent and that the company will always cooperate in full with law enforcement officials. "However," he added, "conducting a raid on the company was a disruptive way to obtain information, and over the top in the sense that it needlessly sabotaged the company's operations for one business working day."

No evidence to support the allegations were discovered by the investigators.

But there could me a more sinister motive behind the actions of the General Prosecutor.

"I suspect the long arm of the Russian Bear," said James Wilson, Director of the Brussels-based EU-Ukraine Business Council. "It is no coincidence that the Ukrainian state owned enterprise Energoatom is crucial to Ukraine's strategy to reduce reliance on Russian exports of energy this winter by increasing domestic nuclear power production. The company has been actively developing new partnerships with EU and US companies like Skoda, Holtec and Westinghouse to help meet its targets, and Russian suppliers have found their services being replaced by Western contractors."

"It does not take Einstein to work out who will benefit most from sabotaging Energoatom's operations," he went on to say. "It should be a matter of grave concern to the EU that the fifth column appears to have infiltrated all organs of government in Ukraine including the law enforcement system. It is being manipulated by Russia in a crude attempt to interfere with Ukraine's energy strategy. We should be vigilant to stop this kind of behaviour and secure protection for legitimate government priorities.”

This is not the first time that Ukraine’s primary energy producer has come under attack; environmental NGOs - often financed from overseas - regularly use the tactics of high-profile law suits, public protests and media campaigns to seek to influence the strategic decisions of the government in the electric power sector.

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