Utility consumers in Ukraine may soon face a wave of natural gas outages and an increase in energy tariffs.
VIDEO OF THE DAY
The reason for this is huge debts for utility services, which, according to official data, amount to just over UAH 100 billion, but in reality may exceed all of UAH 200 billion.
According to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, according to the results of the 2nd quarter of 2025, the total debt for payment for utility services in Ukraine amounted to UAH 106.6 billion. Ukrainians owed the most for thermal energy and hot water — UAH 35.2 billion.
Also among the debts:
ADVERTISING
- Ukrainians owed 32.3 billion hryvnias for gas;
- for electricity — 17.1 billion hryvnias;
- for cold water – 10.2 billion hryvnias;
- for the management of an apartment building – 8.8 billion hryvnias;
- for garbage removal — 3.1 billion hryvnias.
At the same time, as explained to “FACTS” by the head of the Union of Consumers of Utilities of Ukraine, Oleg Popenko , the real amount of debt may be about 200 billion hryvnias. The reason for this is the charging for utility services to residents of temporarily occupied territories, who, according to the expert, were charged until the summer of 2024.
– In December 2021, the debt for utility services amounted to UAH 16.5 billion, and I do not believe that it increased so slightly during the war, – emphasized the interlocutor of “FACTS”.
But even the official amount of debt looks significant and, according to Oleg Popenko, for Ukrainians it will mean that:
ADVERTISING
- we should expect an increase in the number of disconnections for debts;
- increase in utility tariffs.
“A number of gas supply companies have already announced that they will disconnect the service for 1 month's delay in payment. After all, then the service will need to be reconnected, which costs 1,500−2,000 hryvnias,” says Oleg Popenko about the double danger of disconnections for debts.
The second factor will be the inevitable raising of the issue of tariff increases to repay accumulated debts, which, according to the expert, has become traditional for Ukraine.
“Since the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, the practice of increasing tariffs has been introduced to repay old debts. But in fact, due to the inability of the population to pay for them, the debt has only grown, and this has led to the creation of a funnel of debt accumulation, and sooner or later it will end with the fact that there will simply be nothing to pay the debts,” emphasized Oleg Popenko.
At the same time, the interlocutor of “FACTS” especially noted the fact that by raising tariffs for the population, state monopolies often simply write off debts to private companies.
ADVERTISING
– This is what Andriy Kobolev (at that time the head of NJSC Naftogaz) did in 2020, who wrote off UAH 20 billion in debts to Dmytro Firtash because they could not repay them. The same Ukrenergo has UAH 60 billion in debts to them, but they themselves admit that they are unpaid. And it turns out that problems with debts for utility services are being transferred to ordinary Ukrainians by raising tariffs, – summarized the interlocutor of “FACTS”.
Let us remind you that, as previously reported by Oleg Popenko to “FACTS”, in the event of an increase in gas and electricity tariffs, according to the maximum calculations, you will have to pay 25 hryvnias per cubic meter of blue fuel, and 10 hryvnias per kilowatt of electricity.
