The Cabinet of Ministers fired Volodymyr Zhmak, the head of railway monopoly Ukrzaliznytsia, on March 17.
The government has already appointed Ivan Yurik as acting CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia. Yurik had held this position before Zhmak took office in August 2020.
According to a Kyiv Post source, who wasn’t authorized to speak to the press, Zhmak was dismissed for several reasons: he allegedly lobbied oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s interests and made decisions violating the company’s statute.
Zhmak couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. Ukrzaliznytsia press secretary Polina Chyzh neither picked up the phone nor replied to the Kyiv Post text messages.
Ukrzaliznytsia under Zhmak allegedly dumped the freight transportation price for Akhmetov’s Metinvest.
The state company rented half of its freight wagons — around 9,000 units — to Metinvest’s cargo company, Metinvest Shipping, for a knockdown price. Metinvest won an auction offering to pay just $155,000 a day for using the wagons, while the listing price must have been $252,000 a day.
Metinvest will be using the wagons for this price until 2024.
Another reason for Zhmak’s dismissal is how he conducted the Ukrzaliznytsia’s unbundling reform, which foresees the division of the company into separate entities to increase transparency and simplify railway operations.
According to the Kyiv Post’s source, the creation of the branches happened without informing the supervisory board, which violated the company’s statute.
Making decisions himself, Zhmak created a cargo branch that, apart from managing rolling stock, included repair enterprises. This isn’t the way the supervisory board saw the reform.
Days ago, on March 11, the director of the cargo branch Irakli Ezugbaia, resigned. He said the reasons were the slow pace of the company’s reform and the bullying from the management of Ukrzaliznytsia.
“There are certain forces that aren’t very interested in a national freight carrier,” Ezugbaia said at a press conference on March 11.
