The quality of state management in Ukraine has reached a critically low level, evolving into a direct threat to national security during wartime.
Speaking with political analyst Yurii Romanenko, economist Oleh Ustenko argued that a lack of accountability and professional selection has turned strategic assets into loss-making "feeding troughs."
Ustenko emphasized that the current system's primary flaw is the abandonment of meritocratic principles in favor of political loyalty.
"The problem is also that we have lost the continuity of professional management. When people are appointed based on loyalty rather than professional suitability (meritocracy), the system begins to degrade. It is like an engine: if you replace parts with low-quality analogs, it first sputters and then stops," the economist noted.
According to the expert, the absence of personal responsibility for results creates a situation where every financial loss is linked to an official who faces no consequences. "We must understand that behind every figure stands a specific person making decisions. If that person bears no responsibility for the result, we get what we have," he added.
Yurii Romanenko compared modern administrators with managers from the early 2000s, who, despite all their "nuances," possessed a strategic vision for industry development.
"I recently recalled the management of the early 2000s in some large state corporations. There were people who may have had their 'nuances,' but they understood how the industry worked... They had a strategy for 5–10 years. Now, our strategy is 'how to survive until the next tranche,'" Romanenko observed.
He also highlighted the lack of real control: "We need clear KPIs for every official and every director of a state enterprise. If you don't perform, you're out. Yet here, they can fail at everything and remain in their seats for years."
Romanenko cited the example of a rigid but precise approach to business processes practiced previously (referencing Ihor Lytovchenko and Kyivstar), contrasting it with the current chaos.
"When a tender was announced, they would come and say: 'Here is your profit margin, here is the efficiency corridor.' They calculated everything down to the penny. People were stunned because everything was laid out with mathematical precision... That is management. It may have been tough, but it worked. As a result, we have ended up with this wretchedness that is unbearable to watch," Romanenko stressed.
Experts state that maintaining ineffective assets for the sake of appointing "cronies" is unacceptable during wartime.
"And this is during a war! When every billion means thousands of shells. This is 'Soviet state capitalism' in its worst manifestation. We hold assets we cannot effectively use, simply 'to have them' or to appoint 'our' person there... We need personal financial, and sometimes criminal, liability for overtly harmful decisions," Oleh Ustenko concluded.
