The government approved new members of the “Ukrenergo” supervisory board. What is known about them

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved four candidates for the positions of independent members of the supervisory board of “Ukrenergo”.

This is stated in the relevant government resolution.

The winners of the selection were:

• Patrick Greichen. Previously, he headed the German think tank Agora Energiewende, and was State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection in Germany in 2021-2023.
• Luigi de Franciski, who was already on the supervisory board of “Ukrenergo”. Previously, he was also a member of the top managers of the Italian energy company “Terna”.
• Jeppe Kofod. He was the deputy chairman of the Delegation for relations with the United States and a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. In 2019-2022, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark — during the full-scale invasion, he came to Ukraine three times. And from 2014 to 2019, he was a member of the European Parliament.
• Ian Montell. He is the current chairman of the board of directors of the energy company Skarta Energy. Previously held a similar position at “Nord Pool AS” and “Fingrid Datahub Oy”.

What preceded

On September 2, the supervisory board of “Ukrenergo” held an extraordinary meeting at the initiative of the chairman Volodymyr Kudrytskyi. He presented a report on ensuring the protection of high-voltage network facilities during Russian attacks and the situation around the company in the public domain.

During the meeting, the majority of members of the Supervisory Board decided to prematurely terminate the powers of Volodymyr Kudrytskyi by agreement of the parties.

After that, the head of the “Ukrenergo” supervisory board Daniel Dobbeni and its member Peder Andreasen prematurely terminated their powers, because, in their opinion, Kudrytskyiʼs dismissal was politically motivated.

"We believe that the decision to prematurely dismiss the head of “Ukrenergo” is politically motivated and, based on the results of the presented report, there are no valid grounds for it," their statement reads.

They also noted that during their time working on the board, they "felt political pressure and observed constant attempts to bypass the competition to appoint people whose professional qualities were questionable to the companyʼs board".

The media, citing sources, wrote that Kudrytskyi was fired allegedly because the energy facilities were not sufficiently protected from Russian attacks. Kudrytskyi himself stated that his dismissal "has nothing to do with the security of ʼUkrenergoʼ substations".

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.