who will join by video conference. The three countries – plus Russia – are members of the ‘Normandy’ format of peace talks. The Normandy group has not met since December 2019.

 Oleksiy Chernyshov, Minister for Community and Territorial Development, says according the government website. The announcement came at a meeting with Dragon Capital, which is building two industrial parks. The Ministry will spend almost $3 million this year on industrial parks, 10 times the amount spent in the last five years. By definition, an industrial park can contain factories, ports, warehouses.

Tourism – work starts on repairing 320 km of mountain roads in the Small Carpathian Ring project, a tourism route in Lviv and Zakarpattia regions.

Social – 500 projects: 95 schools, 70 kindergartens, 80 sports facilities, 20 cultural facilities, 35 hospitals, 200 outpatient clinics.

Ukrposhta – “100% digitalization” of the state postal operator; launching of 2,000 mobile post offices, five automated mail hubs and 10 sorting depots

The Kyiv School of Economics estimates this injection of money into construction will increase Ukraine’s GDP by 2.2% over the next five years. The study cites: increases in investment in transport, courier services and tourism; reduction of travel time, fuel spending and vehicle repairs; business expansion and new enterprises.

Foreign investors are to get the chance to invest in this massive spending by buying sovereign-backed infrastructure bonds in a new $3 billion state fund, reports Ukravtodor, the state highway agency. Under development with the EBRD, the state fund would be subject to international arbitration, and would have an independent supervisory board. To get Ukravtodor in shape for foreign investment, 30 EBRD specialists are working at the agency to put all tenders on line and ensure that procurement follows Western standards.

“Similar funds operate in most developed countries – Build America, Infrastructure Canada, Macquarie Korea Infrastructure Fund, Polish Development Fund and more,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy presidential chief of staff and coordinator of the Great Construction program. “Such funds provide more transparent and efficient management of the country’s investment projects. “The Great Construction Fund in Ukraine will allow attracting long-term financing in both domestic and foreign markets.”

Private investors would buy sovereign-backed bonds issued by Ukravtodor, Tomas Fiala, CEO of Dragon Capital told the forum. “It is expected that the amount of investment attracted under state guarantees will be several billion dollars from private investors from around the world. In general, the transport infrastructure is extremely attractive for investment.” Jean-Erik de Zagon, head of the European Investment Bank’s Ukraine’s office, concurred, saying: “Financiers are convinced that good infrastructure will be a boost for private sector development.”

With the traditional March start of the roadbuilding season, Ukraine will see this year the largest amount of road construction since Independence 30 years ago. In all, 4,678 km of roads are to be rebuilt this year – 20% more than last year and nearly four times the annual average of 2017-2019. The breakdown is: 1,205 km of international roads, 1,363 km of national roads, 1,206 km of territorial roads and 904.3 km of regional roads.

Ukraine plans to disconnect from the electricity grid with Belarus and the Russian Federation by the end of 2023, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Tuesday at a press conference in Kyiv with Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielus Landsbergis. “Since Soviet times, the Ukrainian power grid has been a part of a single network that includes Belarus and Russia,” Kuleba said. “But we want to cut off from this network and make the Ukrainian power grid an integrated part of the European network. We plan to do this by the end of 2023. After that, any power flows from Belarus will become physically impossible.”

As outlined this week at the Presidential forum ‘Ukraine 30. Infrastructure’ the highlights of this year’s $5.3 billion ‘Great Construction’ are:

During this month’s cold snap, Russia and Belarus supplied about 3% of Ukraine’s electricity needs. Underproduction of electricity at nuclear power plants and a shortage of coal at thermal power plants caused electricity prices to jump as much as 30% in February of January.

Kyiv’s 150 km Ring Road – work starts on two sections; tenders are to be prepared on the other three sections

Despite this dependence, Acting Energy Minister Yuriy Vitrenko told the Rada last month: “Reasonable import restrictions should be imposed right now.” Two weeks ago, he told the European Business Association that Ukraine needs to bring its regulatory framework in line with European law to meet the goal of integrating with ENTSO-E, the European energy system, by the end of 2023. Vitrenko may now have the powers to oversee this process. On Tuesday, the Rada passed a law giving acting ministers the powers of Rada-approved ministers.

Kyiv-Odesa highway – the southern half will be rebuilt/repaired; for safety reasons, 21 of 23 left hand turns will be eliminated; most pedestrian crossings will be replaced with bridges or underpasses.

Ukraine started vaccinating yesterday against Covid-19, targeting doctors, nurses and soldiers. The first 500,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Kyiv Tuesday from the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. Ukraine has reserved 22 million doses of vaccine. It is negotiating to secure more to cover half of the adult population this year. After an infection lull, Ukraine is experiencing an uptick with 5,850 new cases reported for the 24-hour period ending Wednesday morning. Over the last year, 1.16 million Ukrainians are known to have recovered from Covid-19, and 25,461 have died.

Dnipro road bridges – work continues on the Zaporizhia bridges; work starts on the Kremenchuk bridge; Ukravtodor offers to take over from the Kyiv City Administration the 28-year-old Podil-Voskresenska Bridge and complete the road and rail project by the end of next year.

Windrose Airlines plans to expand its domestic flight network this summer to have flights from Kyiv Boryspil to at least nine regional capitals, Volodymyr Kamenchuk, Windrose CEO, said yesterday at the infrastructure forum. He said: “We want to expand our flight map to at least 10 airports in 2021.”  One year ago, before the pandemic hit, Windrose flew from Boryspil to: Dnipro, Lviv, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Kherson. At the forum on Monday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine plans to reconstruct or build airports in 16 regional capitals over the next three years.

Border checkpoints – 250 km of approach roads are to be upgraded; a bridge replace a ferry over the Dnistr, linking Yampil, Vinnytsia, and Cosăuți, Moldova. The Kyiv-Chisinau road will be upgraded to cut drive time to six hours

Cement roads – work is to double, focusing on southern roads where overloaded trucks headed to Black Sea ports damage asphalt in hot weather

M-30 highway – to be Ukraine’s longest road, stretching from Stryi, Lviv region to Luhansk, this 1,400 km East-West road is numbered after this year’s Independence anniversary

High speed charging stations for electric vehicles – increase stations on the most popular highways: Kyiv-Lviv, Kyiv-Odessa and Kyiv-Dnipro; add charging stations to the Orlivka, Ukraine terminal of the new trans-Danube ferry to Romania.