--- --- Oct 30, 2025 # Maxim Timchenko CEO, DTEK by Maxim Timchenko  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Photo: Andreas Solaro—AFP/Getty Images) _Maxim Timchenko leads DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company. Russian strikes on DTEK’s infrastructure have repeatedly crippled the company’s energy generating capacity, causing widespread blackouts. Under Timchenko’s leadership, this year DTEK has invested heavily in bolstering Ukraine’s energy security by expanding renewables—including_ [_Ukraine’s largest wind farm_](https://dtek.com/en/media-center/news/dtek-invest-450-million-tyligulska-windfarm-expansion/) _and one of the_ [_biggest in battery energy storage projects_](https://dtek.com/en/media-center/news/dtek-and-fluence-start-commissioning-phase-of-ukraines-largest-battery-storage/) _in Eastern Europe. In partnership with global clean energy giant Octopus Energy, DTEK recently launched the_ [_RISE initiative_](https://dtek.com/en/media-center/news/powering-ukraine-dtek-and-octopus-energy-group-launch-rise-initiative-to-boost-energy-resilience-/)_, a first-of-its-kind program to raise €100 million ($116 million) to finance 100 commercial solar and battery projects across Ukraine to stabilize the grid and lower electricity costs._ **What is the single most important action you think the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?** The single most important climate action we can take is to ensure that money gets to where it is needed most. Making the energy transition real means channeling capital to areas of the world that are not wellserved, or where the potential impact is greatest. By some estimates, Ukraine has huge renewable generation potential. Yet installed capacity is a fraction of its neighbors to the west. So where lenders are reluctant to tread, we need friendly governments and financial institutions to step decisively with risk-sharing mechanisms and other financial instruments that unlock clean energy capital from the private sector. In the case of Ukraine, this investment delivers not only climate action but also energy security for Europe. **What gives you hope about the future of the planet?** My hope comes from the people I see every day. Ukrainian engineers repairing grids after attacks; families keeping the lights on in their houses thanks to solar panels and batteries; global partners standing with Ukraine. If we can build the largest wind farm in Ukraine and the biggest battery storage project in Eastern Europe—in the middle of a war—then change is possible anywhere. **If you could stand up and talk to world leaders at the next COP, what would you say?** My message to world leaders is this: “Energy transition” and “energy security” are not competing priorities. They work together. Four terrible years of full-scale war with Russia has taught us just how vulnerable conventional energy systems can be. And Ukraine has learned, fast, that more decentralized forms of generation and distribution give us far greater resilience to attack. In an era of increasing global instability, governments and businesses around the world are starting to notice what’s going on in Ukraine. We are becoming a laboratory for the energy system of the future and I encourage people to come and see how we are making it happen. 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