A Canadian company has dismantled one of its multimillion-dollar solar investments in Ukraine following a dispute with a powerful tycoon believed to be close to the presidential administration in a case that has underscored the former Soviet state’s troubled investment climate.

TIU Canada completed the removal of its 10.5 megawatt power plant in Nikopol, a city about 500 kilometers southeast of the capital, Kyiv, in mid-November after failing to be reconnected to the electricity grid, company spokesman Brian Mefford told RFE/RL on December 28. The plant contained more than 32,000 solar panels

TIU Canada commissioned the $12 million plant on the territory of the Nikopol FerroAlloy Plant in January 2018 amid much fanfare, with representatives from the local government, foreign embassies, and business community in attendance.

TIU’s solar plant symbolized foreign investors’ interest in the country’s burgeoning alternative-energy industry. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy even highlighted TIU’s investment in a pitch to Canadian investors during a visit to Toronto in July 2019.

However, on March 1, 2020, the Nikopol FerroAlloy Plant disconnected TIU Canada from the electricity grid on the pretext of needing to make repairs to the power substation on its territory, the solar company said.

Almost two years later, the solar power plant remained idle, costing TIU Canada millions of dollars in lost revenue.

The decision to dismantle the plant follows an unsuccessful, two-year legal, media, and lobbying campaign against Nikopol FerroAlloy Plant and its main owner, Ihor Kolomoyskiy.

TIU hired Washington-based Blue Star Strategies late last year to lobby on its behalf before the U.S. government on “sustainable energy investments in Ukraine.”

TIU has accused Kolomoyskiy of cutting the company off from the grid in an attempt to purchase it at a knockdown price. Such ruthless business practices were common in the 1990s and early 2000s in many former Soviet states but have since subsided.

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