European Energy Community appoints a Firtash associate as head of its Ukrainian office

European Energy Community has appointed as head of its Ukrainian office a protégé of Firtash

In early August, the Energy Community appointed former Ukrainian energy minister Oleksii Orzhel as head of the ECT Energy Community Office in Ukraine. This is a very high-profile position, because now the Community is channeling millions of dollars into restoring Ukraine’s energy system, which was damaged by the war.

From this perspective, the choice in favor of Orzhel is at least odd. For if the Energy Community had at least superficially checked his biography, it would have immediately seen ties to pro-Russian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and open lobbying of importing electricity from Russia and Belarus in the not-too-distant past.

Orzhel and the defense of Russian imports

Orzhel’s lobbying for importing electricity from the aggressor country is a story from 2020 year. Recall that during this period Ukraine experienced its first coronavirus lockdown, industrial production fell, and as a result domestic electricity producers faced a drastic shortage of consumers.

And it was during this time that Russian electricity imports were running into Ukraine at full tilt. This “flooded” domestic generation and greatly benefited the Kremlin. Imports were opened somewhat earlier—in November 2019 year—thanks to a controversial amendment pushed through behind the scenes by Andriy Gerus, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada energy committee and an ally of oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

What was the energy minister Oleksii Orzhel doing during this period, what was his position? He supported imports!

“Overall, imports help to push prices down,” explained Orzhel in defense of imports of Putin’s megawatts.

He did not mention that imports from Russia, which had not been in place for four years, were resumed to supply cheap Russian electricity to Ihor Kolomoyskyi’s ferroalloy plants.

That is, at a time when Ukraine’s energy sector was critically short of consumers, Orzhel supported the aggressor state. The then minister even publicly wondered why the “Russian and Belarusian brothers” were refusing to buy Ukrainian electricity.

“We are actively negotiating with the Belarusian side, less actively with the Russian side, regarding the supply of our electricity. At night, when Energoatom is ready to sell electricity, we have a relatively low price for it, and we can be more than competitive in those markets. But there is a refusal. It is unfair: if you want to sell to us, we can also export to you, and there is no need to close your market, let’s work on parity conditions,” Orzhel argued.

It is also worth noting that opening electricity imports from Russia and Belarus threatened the future synchronization of Ukraine’s and Europe’s energy systems. After all, if Ukrainian companies had signed long-term contracts for Russian and Belarusian electricity, they would have had the option to sue for disconnection from the RB and RF grids and demand compensation.

Orzhel and Firtash’s friends

Even more obvious is the connection between Oleksii Orzhel and the sanctioned pro-Russian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. They are linked through the controversial entrepreneur Ihor Tynny.

For many years Orzhel headed the Ukrainian Renewable Energy Association (UREA), one of the founders of which was Ihor Tynny. In effect, in this role he lobbied for “green” interests since the Yanukovych era.

The “owner” of UREA, Ihor Tynny, is a figure of great interest. At first glance he appears as a progressive entrepreneur developing green energy and conducting each project for the benefit of society. But that is only at first glance.

Journalists who studied this “philanthropist” in detail wrote that “even a cursory look at Tynny’s biography suggests a serious business empire behind him. It blends the interests of the Lvovochkins family (Serhii and Yulia), a protege of oligarch Firtash Ivan Fursin, and, in fact, Dmytro Firtash himself. For Tynny, it is very important to leverage connections with top officials. At least, this has worked for him since the Yanukovych era.”

Such a useful official for Ihor Tynny and his partners was Oleksii Orzhel. And soon after Orzhel’s appointment to the Ministry of Energy, Tynny himself began to be called the “shadow minister.”

Moreover, People’s Deputy Olga Vasylivska-Smahlyuk claimed that Ihor Tynny conducts all interviews for Oleksii Orzhel.

“It is Tynny who, at Orzhel’s direction, approves candidates for the agencies under the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection. The interviews take place in Kyiv restaurants, which are also owned by Tynny… Children are choking on smoke and emissions from Enerhiya plant. All this leads to obstructive bronchitis and adenoids… The community has been warning for months about violations of environmental norms. And the minister stays silent, while his business partner handles appointments in the most key agencies,” Vasylivska-Smahlyuk complained.

But Ihor Tynny himself did not hide his influence over his marionette minister Orzhel. In one interview, he described how, allegedly at Orzhel’s request, he “screened” candidates for the Ministry of Energy. Tynny jokingly called this work “a special kind of help.”

“He [Orzhel, – ed.] was looking for personnel; he needed to fill hundreds of vacancies quickly. He turned to a special kind of help: people brought huge stacks of resumes from members of the Verkhovna Rada and the President’s Office, and he asked me and other colleagues to gather information about these people so as not to err. … I had several episodes where I met with people and spoke with them very carefully,” Tynny said.

As an example of this “help,” Tynny cited the following: “A person comes and says: I am a specialist, for example in the forestry industry. And when you clarify, it turns out that they work for someone who is the largest exporter or supplier of timber. That can change the attitude toward the candidate.”

Usually such work is done by recruitment agencies, which are at equal remove from all the “overly interested” parties. But is Tynny’s biography so crystal-clear? Not at all!

In 2023 year, Tynny conducted business with Yulia Lvovichkina—the former member of parliament from OPZZh and sister of the ex-head of the Presidential Administration Serhii Lvovochkin. Together they own several small hydroelectric plants on the rivers of Transcarpathia.

Tynny is also directly connected with the pro-Russian, sanctioned oligarch Dmytro Firtash. In the company Enerhiya Karpat, owned by Lvovochkina and Tynny, there is another founder—the offshore MIZONIO HOLDINGS LIMITED. Its director is Marianna Papua, and she is also a director at OSTCHEM INTERNATIONAL LIMITED—one of the Cypriot offshore structures serving Group DF of Dmytro Firtash.

And although publicly Tynny says he had only “a few consulting ties” with Firtash, their partnership is not merely superficial.

“The first deal where I met him concerned, in my view, the construction of the Parus business center (33—a multi-story skyscraper in the center of Kyiv, – ed.). My company was brought in to accompany this deal by Ivan Fursin’s recommendation,” Tynny said.

Agree that oligarchs do not allow strangers to such deals. Oligarchs work with trusted people, with whom partnerships last for many years. And the presence of a Firtash offshore founder among Tynny’s founders is evidence of this.

A similar situation exists with Tynny and Oleksii Orzhel. Despite Tynny’s statements about misunderstandings that arose with Orzhel during his headship of the Ministry of Energy, they did not stay out of each other’s sight for long. And in spring 2023 Orzhel again headed Tynny’s Ukrainian Renewable Energy Association.

Such personnel policy by Tynny is entirely understandable. For him, Orzhel, who was professionally “grown” for more than ten years, is too valuable to be traded.

And, as we see, this bet paid off—Orzhel rose from the Ukrainian Renewable Energy Association to the post of minister of energy, and now to the head of the Energy Community Office in Ukraine.

With such a career ascent, one can only congratulate—primarily Dmytro Firtash, who now has a lobbyist at the EU level. Now the pro-Russian oligarch has the opportunity to influence how and to whom foreign aid for Ukraine’s energy restoration is distributed. And that is hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Energy Community should carefully verify its representatives and, before it is too late, reconsider its decision in favor of another candidate who has not smeared his reputation by lobbying Kremlin interests and cooperating with pro-Kremlin oligarchs.

Author: Ruslan Shirokov