Corporate “Titanic”: losses of 2,5 billion and threat of default put Ukrposhta’s future in question

Corporate “Titanic”: losses of 2,5 billion and threat of default put Ukrposhta’s future in question

2025 year for Ukrposhta and its CEO Ihor Smilyanskyi became a concentrate of managerial failures, public conflicts, and financial risks that can no longer be written off as “reforms” or the war. The central irritant remained the issue of the CEO’s salary. For many years Ukrposhta refused to disclose Smilyanskyi’s compensation, limiting itself to formal responses. That spawned speculation, which in 2025 year was once again fanned by Member of Parliament Oleksii Honcharenko.

MP Nina Yuzhanina publicly named a range of 1,4–1,8 million UAH per month, ex-MP Andrii Pavlovskyi — 2,28 million UAH. Only in May was Smilyanskyi forced to state the figures: about 970 thousand UAH per month, or 11,7 million UAH per year, from which multi-million taxes are paid. At the same time Smilyanskyi confirmed that he is a tax resident of the United States and pays about 2,1 million UAH in taxes there per year. He and the relevant ministry refused to disclose whether he holds U.S. citizenship. Ukrposhta also refused Yuzhanina’s request for a list of positions with salaries over 100 thousand UAH per month, not even naming the positions themselves, reports Informator.

A separate scandal is the mandatory payment of 1 UAH from each parcel, introduced at the end of 2024 year, the funds from which were directed to the KSE fund led by Tymofii Mylovanov — former Minister of Economy, former adviser to Andrii Yermak, and former member of the supervisory boards of Ukroboronprom and Energoatom. According to Nina Yuzhanina’s calculations, just in 2025 year the fund could have received about 50 million UAH from Ukrposhta customers, while a significant part of the fund’s revenues is also formed from stamp sales — about 67 million UAH since February 2022. After the scandal with the “Mindychi tapes” and operations by NABU and SAP, Mylovanov left the supervisory boards of Energoatom and Ukroboronprom, but Ukrposhta has still not answered whether cooperation with his fund continues.

Amid talk of “development,” the company has been unprofitable for the third year in a row. Over the 2022–2024 years the cumulative loss amounted to 2,5 billion UAH, uncovered loss exceeded 1,2 billion UAH, capitalization dropped from 2,8 billion to 0,2 billion UAH. The National Bank explicitly stated that in this condition Ukrposhta does not meet the financial stability criteria to enter the banking market, which Smilyanskyi has dreamed of for many years. Government documents explicitly speak of the risk of default to creditors and the need to recapitalize the strategic enterprise. Former supervisory board member Rinat Abdrasilov called Ukrposhta a “corporate ‘Titanic’” heading toward the iceberg of insolvency. Smilyanskyi himself called all this manipulation, stating that the “minus” arose due to a change in the NBU methodology and is of a “paper” nature, and that by 1 January 2026 the company will supposedly fix everything with its own funds.

The quality of the core service — delivery — remains a chronic problem. In January Ternopil State Medical University named after I. Ya. Horbachevskyi officially reported that letters from Kyiv took more than a month, and some correspondence within the city did not arrive for weeks. Users massively complain about deliveries between neighboring regions taking several weeks and lost shipments. Network optimization led to disruptions in the judicial system: the head of the apparatus of the Supreme Court, Viktor Kapustynskyi, said court staff were forced to search for cases at Kyiv post offices, and Ukrposhta lost some materials. Supreme Court Chair Stanislav Kravchenko confirmed cases when court notices were delivered to entirely different cities.

The CEO’s public behavior only intensified the tension. Smilyanskyi’s main opponent became Oleksii Honcharenko, to which the head of Ukrposhta responded by reminding of his past in the Party of Regions, support for the Russian language, and origin from the family of former Odesa mayor Oleksii Kostusev, as well as calls to check funding of the “Honcharenko centers.”