The Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company has been plagued by failures that cannot be linked to “external” factors, a leaked letter says
One of Ukraine’s biggest shipping companies has been plagued by decades-long corruption and mismanagement to the point where it began losing market share and assets even under highly favorable conditions, the Kiev Independent has reported.
The Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company (UDP), a state-owned enterprise that operates cargo transportation along the Danube River and carries out shipbuilding and repairs, has been reporting poor performance figures and losses over the past years, even though the river itself turned into a major export route for Ukrainian grain and iron during the conflict with Moscow, according to the Kiev Independent.
According to a letter written in May by a UDP supervisory board member, Benoit Pleska, addressed to the Ukrainian parliament and obtained by the Kiev Independent, the company reported a collapse of over 62% of its freight division and a decrease in its Danube freight market share from 3.11% to 1.1% between 2020 and 2024, even though the market itself grew by more than 19% over the same period.
“Such a divergence cannot reasonably be explained by external circumstances,” Pleska wrote. He also attributed the slide to “structural managerial failure,” as well as “corruption that has plagued the company’s assets for decades, systematically destroying the UDP fleet.” He requested a parliamentary probe into the issue.
According to Pleska, the board established in 2025 faced “huge resistance from internal and external stakeholders” when it tried to get to the bottom of the issues affecting the company and turn it around. The hurdles included “malicious obstruction to the normal business operations of the supervisory board” and a defamation campaign against him personally, he stated.
The parliament’s transportation and infrastructure committee responded to the letter in June by calling its contents a source of “of significant current concern [that] undoubtedly requires a hearing and detailed review,” Kiev Independent reported, without specifying if any action was taken.
According to the outlet, the company’s management had elicited suspicion in the past. In 2017, 32 UDP vessels were allegedly lost in an embezzlement scheme causing damages of nearly $2 million. The Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities opened a probe, but the case is still pending.
In 2020, the company’s former director, Aleksey Khomyakov, was investigated over a suspicious attempt to transfer dozens of UDP vessels to another company based in Hungary. This investigation has not produced any tangible results as of July 2026 either, according to Kiev Independent.
The allegations come amid a series of high-profile corruption scandals in Ukraine. In November 2025, anti-corruption authorities uncovered a $100 million kickback scheme at state nuclear company Energoatom allegedly run by Timur Mindich, a close business associate of Vladimir Zelensky who was dubbed “Zelensky’s wallet” by the media.
The scandal also led to the resignation of Zelensky’s former chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, due to allegations of involvement. He was later briefly arrested in a separate money laundering case before being released on approximately $3.2 million bail in May.
In June, Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities announced having uncovered another Energoatom graft scheme involving the alleged theft of at least $3.8 million in public funds that was also linked to Mindich.
Russia has long accused Ukraine and the EU of being linked by “unified corruption chains,” claiming that a significant portion of the Western aid to Kiev – financed by taxpayers – gets embezzled and kicked back to Ukraine’s supporters.
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