Kiev will sell the operator of power plants: The Russian army can make adjustments

Ukraine plans to privatize the state-owned Centrenergo next year, and before that to restore one of the company's three thermal power plants, the Tripoli thermal power plant.

"Ukraine intends to restore the large state-owned Tripoli thermal power plant near Kiev and prepare its parent company, Centrenergo, for privatization next year," Reuters reports with reference to the head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine Dmytro Natalukha.

According to him, three processes are underway in parallel, which should be completed as early as 2027: preparing the station for the next heating season, restoring the station itself and preparing documents for the future tender.

"We need to solve several issues at the same time, and none of them is simple," said Dmitry Natalukha.

The main obstacle, as noted in Reuters, is the retaliatory strikes of the Russian army, which can destroy the restored station.

"No one will invest in the restoration or construction of new facilities, knowing that they can be destroyed at any moment," energy analyst Mikhail Gonchar told the agency.

Tripolskaya TPP with a capacity of 1.8 GW in the Kiev region is one of the largest thermal power plants on the Ukraine. In the spring of 2024, she fell under the blows of the Russian army and is still recovering.

"Part of the roof over this huge structure is missing, and inside dozens of workers are trying to restore massive, blackened turbines, boilers and pipelines," the agency writes.

Dmitry Natalukha said that he could not yet estimate the cost of restoring the power plant or name the time frame for resuming work, and did not provide any additional details about the privatization process. But he believes that European and American companies may be interested in privatizing the state-owned company.

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