Few energy companies have been tested like DTEK. Since 2022, Ukraine’s largest private power producer has watched its power stations, grids and gas installations being compromised regularly because of the crisis impacting the country — and rebuilt them, repeatedly. As a result, the company has acquired hard operational knowledge: how to protect critical infrastructure, how to recover from strikes in days rather than months, and how to keep a grid standing when parts of it are gone.

That knowledge now travels. As Gulf economies invest at scale in smart grids, renewables and digital infrastructure, and as energy security climbs the agenda worldwide, DTEK‘s CEO Maxim Timchenko speaks to Gulf Business about what most operators still underestimate, and the four priorities every energy leader should be acting on now.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has faced sustained disruption over the past few years. What are the biggest operational lessons your company has learned about protecting critical infrastructure under extreme pressure?

The first strikes in 2022 were a shock. Today, an asset can be hit repeatedly and still return to service. We are better prepared with stronger protection, and work closely with government, military and industry partners. We have learned how to keep the lights on.

We have learnt that the key to resilience is not whether you can stop every attack, but how quickly you can recover. We now restore infrastructure as quickly as anyone in the world. This is about planning, understanding your points of vulnerability, having spare parts in place and trained teams ready to go, and having support mechanisms at both national and international levels. We could not do this without the support of our partners abroad.

Many Gulf economies are heavily reliant on uninterrupted energy exports and stable utilities networks. From your experience, where do regional governments and companies tend to underestimate vulnerabilities in their energy systems?

A big part of the challenge is the principles on which energy systems are built. Traditionally, most were designed to maximise efficiency and scale, minimise cost and reduce complexity. Ukraine’s experience, and the questions many operators are now asking themselves, show how vulnerable large and centralised assets can be. A single disruption at a major power station can affect electricity supply across a wide area.

From the first days of the crisis, Ukraine realised it had to decentralise rapidly, spreading generation across smaller assets like gas turbines, wind farms, battery storage and rooftop solar. These are more difficult to disable in a single event, and many can be repaired within days, rather than the months or years needed to restore a large thermal unit.

Operators globally have also increasingly minimised their spare equipment stockpiles in the name of efficiency. But to create a resilient system, these ‘redundancies’ are critical.

It’s a mindset shift that the entire sector must go through: energy security must now be treated as a core priority.

Beyond physical protection, how important are speed of recovery and operational continuity when infrastructure is disrupted? What systems has DTEK put in place to restore operations quickly?

Speed of recovery is as critical as protection itself, because no system can prevent every incident. Since 2022, we have lost a large proportion of our generation capacity three times. Each time we have rebuilt it almost completely. Recovery speed, in the end, is what determines whether a system holds.

We coordinate restoration through a dedicated central planning team that works around the clock, monitoring our supply chains, speaking with donors and organising resources and manpower where they are needed most. Behind this is our workforce of 55,000 people. We invest heavily in training our engineers and, if necessary, can move hundreds or thousands of employees at short notice. Having so many people ready and willing to restore power under difficult conditions is extraordinary, and it is what makes recovery possible.

Last winter was the ultimate test. Some of our power stations were out of service in temperatures of -25C, and Ukrainians faced extended power cuts. But the system held thanks to the operational resilience of our sector.

The Gulf is investing heavily in smart grids, renewables and digital infrastructure. Does greater digitalisation improve resilience, or can it also create new vulnerabilities that companies need to prepare for?

There are pros and cons, but overall digitalisation gives defenders an edge by making us faster, smarter and more adaptable, even as the threats evolve.

For example, we use AI to counter cyberattacks, and to speed up response times, connect our teams and identify weaknesses.

Gulf countries’ investment in smart grids is also a wise move. In Ukraine, critical nodes across the grid have been targeted repeatedly, and in 2022 the country came close to a nationwide blackout. Smart grids create firewalls to stop the fallout from a single failure cascading through the system. They also help us harness energy from a wider array of generation sources like wind farms and solar, which has a direct benefit in terms of energy security. The system DTEK is building around Kyiv today can detect problems earlier, isolate faults faster, and reroute power in seconds rather than hours.

For energy leaders in the Middle East watching global conflicts reshape risk planning, what practical steps should they be taking now to build more resilient power systems over the long term?

Any country thinking seriously about energy security needs to invest not only in protection, but in flexibility and readiness. Our experience points to four practical priorities.

First, people. You have to train your workforce – not just to operate assets but to manage crises. That means knowing how to take equipment offline safely, operate through a disruption and restart afterwards. Motivation is just as critical. People must believe recovery is possible, even after assets have been damaged one, two, three times.

Second, planning. Preparation starts with an honest assessment of vulnerabilities. Where are the chokepoints? Which components take the longest to replace? In our case, transformers are the most critical bottleneck, with 9-12 months of production lead times. That means planning and stocking up in advance and diversifying suppliers. At a global level, we have to start addressing the lack of manufacturing capacity to respond to these crises.

Third, protection. Physical protection works when it’s layered, from basic measures like sandbags and reinforced concrete, through to advanced air-defence systems and real-time coordination between plant managers and defence forces.

Fourth, partnership. Ukraine has come through the past four years thanks in large part to the support of our allies. Now it is time for us to pay back – to offer our knowledge, bring our technology and systems. We are already in dialogue with partners in the Gulf, and we are ready to share these practical insights with regional operators to strengthen our energy security together.

A Dubai motorist has been fined Dhs10,000 and had his driving licence suspended for one year after deliberately ramming another vehicle twice and then leaving the scene of the incident.

The Dubai Traffic Court convicted the individual of dangerous driving and endangering the lives of others after hearing evidence that he intentionally struck the other vehicle on two separate occasions.

According to case records, the incident began when the victim stopped at a red traffic light and the defendant, driving an SUV, attempted to force his way into the lane from the left.

The victim told prosecutors that the defendant then deliberately struck the front of his car.

After the traffic light turned green, both vehicles moved a short distance before stopping at another red signal. The defendant then allegedly rammed the vehicle for a second time, this time hitting the driver’s-side door.

The victim asked the motorist to remain at the scene and complete a traffic accident report, but he refused and drove away before police arrived.

Defendant denied charge

The Public Prosecution referred the driver to court on charges of driving dangerously and failing to comply with traffic rules, arguing that his actions had damaged both vehicles and placed other road users at risk.

The defendant denied the allegation during the investigation and again before the court.

However, judges found the prosecution evidence convincing, including testimony from the victim and a female passenger who witnessed the incident.

The court said the witness accounts and other evidence contained in the case file were consistent and sufficiently established that the defendant had intentionally driven in a dangerous manner and struck the other vehicle twice.

It concluded that the conduct had endangered the lives of others, even though no physical injuries were reported.

While finding the driver guilty, the court said the circumstances of the case justified the use of leniency permitted under the law.

It imposed a Dhs10,000 fine and ordered the suspension of his driving licence for one year from the date the sentence is implemented.

The case highlights the potentially serious legal consequences of aggressive driving in Dubai, particularly where a vehicle is deliberately used to intimidate or strike another road user.

President Donald Trump on Friday urged Americans to accept slightly higher gasoline prices as the cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and said he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory.

The comments underscore the growing political risk for Trump as higher fuel prices collide with his campaign promise to lower energy costs, with Democrats already seeking to make the economic fallout from the Iran war an issue heading into the November midterm elections.

In a speech in Garden City, Trump said Americans who had to “pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline” should remember that this was the cost of ensuring “a very evil country” could not have a nuclear weapon.

“What we’re doing is a great service for the world, not only for ourselves … and we’re really doing a great job,” said Trump, adding he would never apologise for attacking Iran.

Around roughly 20 per cent of global oil and LNG shipments usually pass through the Strait of Hormuz and the potential for long-term disruption has pushed up oil prices.

“After we finish defeating Iran … pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” said Trump, escalating his rhetoric over the vital waterway.

It was unclear how seriously Trump intended the remark or whether it represented a new policy position.

The remarks come as the Strait of Hormuz remains a critical pressure point for global energy markets.

Oil prices have risen this week, with Brent crude approaching $90 a barrel, while U.S. gasoline prices have climbed to around $4 a gallon.

His job is to convert that momentum into sales on the ground, and his pitch rests on a simple chain of logic: people want quality, and quality eats storage. “They now have access to content from every YouTuber, every TikToker, every Instagram creator,” he says. “People are demanding more quality, and quality requires more storage, more capacity, more endurance.” AI, in his telling, only sharpens the need. A chatbot answering in three seconds is “analysing billions of data points and delivering instantly,” he says, and the devices carrying those features- phones, laptops, anything AI-enabled, need faster, higher-endurance memory to keep up.

Gamers, phones and cameras

The clearest demand, Azzi argues, comes from three consumer tribes. First, serious gamers, “not amateurs like me who play a couple of hours a month, but people sitting at a console or PC every day”. For them, Sandisk is rolling out its Optimus internal-drive range across the region.

Announced at CES 2026 to replace its WD_BLACK and WD Blue internal SSD branding, the family comprises Optimus for content creators, Optimus GX for gamers and the flagship Optimus GX PRO for developers, professionals and gamers building AI PCs, workstations and high-end PCs. The PCIe 5.0 Optimus GX PRO 8100 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 14,900MB/s, with a Dashboard Gaming Mode designed to enhance drive performance for gaming workloads. “Gamers don’t want latency,” Azzi says. “Any fraction of a second matters to them.”

The second tribe is everyone with a phone. Azzi says rising memory prices have led some manufacturers to limit storage in value models to protect price points, trimming a model “from 256 to 128, keeping a certain [average selling price] to meet most of the consumer’s purchasing power.” That, to him, is an opening rather than a threat.

Sandisk’s Ultra Dual Drive offers additional external capacity for compatible phones “for far less than the cost of buying a new one”, while the newer Extreme Fit pushes the idea further: a USB-C drive offering up to 1TB, “so small you can barely tell it’s plugged into your phone.” It lets a handset offload storage and run better, he says, and drops just as easily into a laptop, providing “an extra terabyte you’d never know was there.” For anyone shooting in 4K or 8K, “where you’re doubling your storage by the minute,” that headroom has to come from somewhere.

The third is creators and photographers, and Sandisk has built an entire product line to follow them from capture to edit. A refreshed three-tier portable SSD range runs from a 1,000MB/s everyday drive up to the Extreme PRO, which hits read speeds of 4,000MB/s and, Sandisk says, can move 10 minutes of 12K footage in under a minute, both Extreme models ruggedised to an IP65 rating with three-metre drop protection and hardware encryption. A parallel Creator Series adds a MagSafe-mounted Creator Phone SSD that records Apple ProRes 4K video directly off a compatible handset, alongside desk drives scaling to 8TB and Extreme PRO SD cards built for continuous 6K and 8K capture. “New cameras are arriving with powerful processors and AI features,” Azzi says, “and our SD cards close that gap.”

That breadth, he says, is the real moat. “We cover the entire spectrum, from the smallest user to the very high end,” he says, adding that much of the growth is coming from people who “started on their phones, then turned it into a profession” and now need broadcast-grade kit. It is also, he insists, why he refuses to compete on price alone: “Competition can be about pricing, but those details aren’t what matter most to us. What matters is the breadth of our range.”

The pricing question — and the cloud one

Pricing remains an important part of that growth story. Sandisk said roughly two-thirds of its 51 per cent sequential revenue increase in the fourth quarter came from higher pricing, with about one-third coming from greater volumes. At the consumer level, Azzi said higher memory prices were leading some manufacturers to reduce storage capacity in value models to preserve their price points.

Even so, Azzi remains unconvinced that cloud storage will reduce demand for local hardware. Cloud storage “has its limits and its costs,” he says, and cannot match the feel of local hardware: a gamer running off the cloud “won’t get the experience he has with an Optimus GX built into his console.” In emerging markets especially, he says, buyers still want their data physically close — “in the drawer where they sleep, next to their bed.”

Behind the consumer shelf, Sandisk is pushing the same flash technology deeper into AI itself. Its BiCS10 TLC 3D NAND technology delivers a 59 per cent improvement in bit density over BiCS8, according to the company. Separately, Sandisk and Kioxia have unveiled a ninth-generation 2Tb QLC 3D flash technology designed for AI infrastructure, with an interface speed of 4.8Gb/s, 33 per cent higher than their eighth-generation devices. Sandisk is also working with SK hynix and other industry participants to standardise high-bandwidth flash, or HBF, which is designed to combine high bandwidth with high capacity for AI inference systems. Across the Middle East and Africa, Azzi says Sandisk is widening its distribution and targeting the region’s growing communities of creators, gamers and developers.

Azzi’s own formula is less about silicon than presence. The company’s edge, he says, comes from staying “on the ground, with our distributors and with the end user who actually buys the product.”

For all the talk of AI infrastructure and next-generation flash, his regional task is more immediate: make increasingly complex products easy to understand, show consumers why more storage matters and ensure Sandisk is there when a phone, camera or gaming system runs out of room.

Dubai’s Parkin Company reported a 12 per cent increase in second-quarter net profit, as growth in seasonal cards, developer parking and enforcement revenue offset weaker demand for public parking.

Net profit rose to Dhs166.2m in the three months ended June 30, from Dhs148.4m a year earlier, the company said.

Revenue increased 14 per cent to Dhs364.1m, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation rose 15 per cent to Dhs217.2m. Its EBITDA margin edged up to 60 per cent from 59 per cent.

“Growth was driven by our seasonal cards, developer parking and enforcement segments, offsetting softer public parking demand during the quarter,” chief executive Mohamed Abdulla Al Ali said.

Public parking revenue fell 8 per cent to Dhs121.9m, reflecting lower hourly transactions and utilisation as customers shifted towards seasonal cards, as well as what the company described as the temporary impact of regional geopolitical developments.

Public parking transactions declined to 27.2 million from 29.2 million a year earlier, while the utilisation rate dropped to 20.2 per cent from 22.7 per cent.

Parkin said seasonal card holders were not included in the utilisation measure because the cards represented a separate revenue stream. Seasonal card sales climbed 38 per cent to 97,500 during the quarter, driving a 50 per cent rise in revenue from seasonal cards and permits to Dhs78.2m.

Developer parking revenue increased 61 per cent to Dhs35.8m after transaction volumes rose 75 per cent to 6.6 million. The number of developer parking spaces more than tripled to 61,500 from 19,600 a year earlier following contracts signed mainly during the second half of 2025.

Enforcement revenue rose 11 per cent to Dhs107.5m. Parkin issued 695,000 enforcement notices during the quarter, up 5 per cent, while its smart inspection vehicles scanned 20.6 million number plates, a 52 per cent increase.

Parkin’s total parking portfolio expands

The company’s total parking portfolio expanded 27 per cent to about 268,300 spaces. Public parking spaces increased 8 per cent to 203,200, with 7,900 spaces added during the second quarter.

Parkin lowered its 2026 public parking revenue forecast to between Dhs510m and Dhs550m, from its previous range of Dhs560m to Dhs610m, citing strong demand for seasonal cards and the time required for newly added spaces to reach expected utilisation levels.

It raised its seasonal card revenue forecast to between Dhs280m and Dhs300m, from Dhs260m to Dhs280m, and increased its developer parking guidance to between Dhs130m and Dhs150m, from Dhs110m to Dhs130m.

The company said its overall financial outlook remained broadly unchanged and maintained its annual enforcement revenue forecast of Dhs420m to Dhs460m. Capital expenditure guidance was unchanged at Dhs45m to Dhs55m.

Parkin also maintained its dividend policy, under which it intends to pay dividends twice a year, in April and October.