Deputy Minister for Reconstruction Oliinyk will be responsible for protecting the energy sector in the Kyiv region
A specially created working group within the Ministry of Recovery, headed by Deputy Minister Ruslan Oliinyk, has been tasked by the government with expediting the installation of second-level protection at major substations in the Kyiv region by November 15. This involves both accelerating the construction work itself and streamlining administrative procedures and expediting funding.
Massive attacks on the Kyiv region’s energy sector this fall confirmed that the region requires special attention, and the protection of its energy facilities must be accelerated.
In mid-October, the Ministry of Recovery, Infrastructure, and Transport established an interagency working group to help Kyiv Oblast implement the planned measures to protect critical infrastructure. In particular, the group aims to accelerate the implementation of the region’s Comprehensive Resilience Plan, which was adopted back in February 2026. The group is headed by Deputy Minister Ruslan Oliinyk. Representatives from the Ministry of Energy, the State Special Communications Service, the State Emergency Service, the State Agency for Infrastructure Recovery and Development of Ukraine, the Kyiv Regional State Administration, and energy companies were involved in the work.
The Comprehensive Resilience Plan is a document that regional leaders and Kyiv officials developed and presented at meetings of the National Security and Defense Council. It provides for backup power supplies for critical infrastructure, the development of decentralized electricity and heat generation, and the physical protection of energy facilities. Regions and communities identified priority facilities and projects on their own, while the Cabinet of Ministers approved the plans and allocated full or partial funding. For security reasons, the specific list of facilities is not being disclosed.
The Kyiv region, in accordance with Government Order No. 257-r, received slightly more than 1 billion hryvnia. An additional 600 million hryvnia was allocated from the regional budget (a subsidy under Order No. 821-r). The government took a long time to allocate the funds, which effectively caused the initial deadline for implementing the resilience plans—September 1—to be missed. In fact, streamlining and accelerating this process is one of the key tasks of Oliinyk’s working group.
Oliinyk himself will be directly responsible for accelerating the implementation of necessary measures and work at critical infrastructure facilities and for carrying out such work within the shortest possible timeframes, with the aim of ensuring the livelihoods of the population of Kyiv Oblast under martial law.
Top Priority
Among the top priorities are conducting a comprehensive analysis of the readiness of 110 kV substations within the region, the amounts of planned, allocated, and utilized funding, and the status of the development and expert review of design and cost estimate documentation. In addition, lists of problematic issues, risks, and circumstances that hinder the timely completion of work and the commissioning of substations within the specified deadlines must be identified as soon as possible. The necessary adjustments to the design and cost estimate documentation must be made by the end of October.
In the coming days, local authorities and the responsible energy companies must select contractors for the permanent and temporary electrical connection of the substations to the relevant power grids and submit agreed-upon proposals regarding the timelines for such work and the required funding. In addition, by the end of October, the regional administration should conduct a financial audit of payments already made and work already performed: reconciling accounts with contractors, verifying the actual scope of work performed, their cost and compliance with acceptance certificates, compliance with design and cost estimate documentation, and determining the amounts of outstanding debts and advances not supported by work performed, etc.
Before transferring the client’s functions to the Recovery Agency, all necessary settlements with contractors must be completed, and in the coming days, the issue of advance payments for work to connect substations to the grids should be addressed.
Deputy Minister Ruslan Oliinyk has personally been overseeing the verification of facility readiness in the Kyiv region for over a week and coordinating issues related to project timelines and financing, risks of delays, as well as the use of advances already paid and the verification of whether the funds spent correspond to the work actually performed.
The ability to complete the planned work to ensure the protection of energy facilities in the Kyiv region within a tight timeframe effectively depends on ascertaining the actual state of affairs. That is why this task has been assigned at the level of the Deputy Minister, who is responsible for ensuring coordination among all relevant agencies and organizations, facilitating the prompt resolution of technical and organizational issues, and monitoring compliance with established deadlines.
As a reminder, the draft state budget of Ukraine for 2027 allocates 60 billion hryvnias for the preparation and implementation of comprehensive regional resilience plans.
Earlier, the National Security and Defense Council approved Kyiv’s resilience plan, and its implementation has already begun.
