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Now that everyone has studied Putin’s 7,000-word discourse on Russia-Ukraine relations….Don’t worry, no snap quiz this Friday morning! But, in light of the US and Germany greenlighting Nord Stream 2 relying – partly — on Russia goodwill toward Ukraine, I offer this anthology of analysis. The headlines capture the flavor: Tara Kuzio, the National Interest: “Why Russia and Ukraine are Likely Headed for War” Anders Aslund, Project Syndicate: “Putin’s Denial of Ukrainian Independence Could Lead to War” Walter Russell Mead,

As the Ukraine Business News grows, we are looking for an experienced IT company to build new pages for our website – www.ubn.news. Preferably, the IT team will have experience with news sites. We also need help with Mailchimp design and programming. If you are interested in working with us, please contact Andrew Pryma, UBN co-owner and Business Manager, at: apryma@ubn.news. With Best Regards Jim Brooke

About 17% of Ukraine’s workforce may be working outside the country. Between three and five million Ukrainian work abroad, Ella Libanova, demographer for the National Academy of Sciences, told yesterday’s forum. Let’s settle on four million. Trading Economics puts Ukraine’s workforce at 19.5 million. That would make a potential total national workforce of 23.5 million. Four million abroad = 17%. With Ukrainian migrant workers sending home $1 billion a month, Ukraine increasingly looks like the Philippines of Eastern Europe. With

“The last one out at the airport, turn out the lights!” we used to joke in Rio in the 1990s, a time when inflation was often several thousand percent a year. Today, in the US, the Brazilian-American community is half a million strong. In contemporary Ukraine, the longer that politicians content themselves with business as usual, the more working class Ukrainians will simply vote with their feet and take the bus to Poland. And, eventually, some will stop coming home

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu has ordered that President Putin’s new article “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” be mandatory study for military-political training of Russian Army soldiers. Putin, who turns 70 next year, may pass from the scene in 10 or 15 years. But if a new generation of Russian military men and women are to be inculcated with his warped, hyper nationalist view of Russia-Ukraine relations, his 7,000 word essay is worth reading. With Best Regards

With Kyiv temperatures forecast to repeatedly hit 32C (90F) over the next week, it is hard to worry in July about heating bills in November. But Gazprom’s artificial gas squeeze this summer will cost everyone dearly in the winter. Hopefully, the inevitable price shock will force action for alternatives: more LNG to the Baltic and to the Adriatic. One option I like starts in a region where I worked as a bright-eyed 29-year-old — Nigeria’s gas-rich river delta. Officially called

Ukraine’s Mississippi, the Dnipro, once again is becoming a working river. Cargo probably will hit 12 million tons this year, a post-Independence high. But in the Soviet era, the river annually moved 60 million tons. To get back to the future, the Rada passed – and President Zelenskiy signed — an inland waterways bill. This should stimulate private investment in river ports and barges. Nibulon sets standard here. Waiting in the wings is foreign aid and advice from two nations

The China deal slipped under the radar, partly obscured by Ukraine’s flipflop over the Uyghur petition. In Ukraine, Chinese construction companies have a checkered reputation – just look at the Zhytomyr bypass. But at home, Chinese builders can be relentless. In the time it takes Kyiv Metro to build one new subway station, the Chinese can build five new bullet train lines to cities you have never heard of. In a few years, we may look back and see last

Alert UBN reader Petro Matiaszek notes that parts of the government’s Diia app are open to non-Ukrainians. But the app is entirely in Ukrainian. In short, it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a foreigner to get vaccinated in Ukraine. Next month, I take my family to the US, where my home state, Massachusetts, has set up MassVax. Massachusetts’ 71% vaccination rate is bested only by its goody-two-shoes northern neighbor, Vermont,

Judging by vaccination lines, many Ukrainians now believe that two jabs and a vaccination certificate is the rational path back to normalcy. It is too late for EU summer vacations. But today’s vaccination vogue could blunt a fourth infection wave – the expected spread in September of the highly contagious Delta variant. With Best Regards, Jim Brooke

Check out the new and improve search function on the UBN website. It gives lightning fast access to the UBN’s 1-million word archive. I use it 5 to 10 times a night. With Best Regards, Jim Brooke

One century ago, in November 23, 1921, a Bolshevik cavalry unit in Bazar, northern Zhytomyr captured and executed 359 soldiers of the Ukrainian People’s Army. With this action, the Bolsheviks consolidated their control over Ukraine. Ukraine embarked on what became a century-long experiment in farming without a private farmland market. Today, a cautious step is being taken to reverse that legacy. A farmland market has been created, opened only to Ukrainian individuals and limited to 100 hectares. But it will

It is a story as old as the Pharisees, the corrupt biblical judges of two millennia past. Today, 79% of Ukrainians do not trust their courts and judges, according to a recent survey by the Razumkov Center. Only 12% say they trust the courts and judges. Governments play with fire when they ignore deep alienation from the judicial system. Examples of radical revolts that come to mind are: the Shining Path in Peru, their Maoist brethren in Pol Pot’s Cambodia,

With yesterday’s banking holiday behind us, five banking heads participate this afternoon in Strategy Council’s Ukraine Banking webinar. Starting at 4 pm Kyiv time, the lineup includes: Oleksandr Pysaruk, Board Chair, Raiffeisen Bank; Iryna Starominska, Board Chair, Universal Bank; Ashot Abrahamyan, CEO, Bank Lviv; Yevhen Hlinskyi, Director, Financial Services, Ukrposhta; Yannis Kyriakopoulos, Supervisory Board Chair, Piraeus Bank; and Alexander McWhorter, CEO, Citi Ukraine. Leading the discussion of how banks are evolving in Ukraine in the age of digitalization are two

For over 2,500 years, ships traveling from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea have had to traverse the Bosporus. This chokepoint has been fought over by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Turks and Czarist Russians. In the wake of the ‘war to end all wars’ (World War 1), the Montreux Convention was drawn up to control the entry of non-Black Sea nations’ warships. That is one reason why Washington sent the US Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton into the Black in April.

An irritating 13-year-old boy will pinch the garden hose hoping you will peer down the dry tube. Russian’s president is craftier. He pinches the gas hose to ‘teach’ Europeans how much they need Nord Stream 2. Of course, they don’t. Over lunch this week, an EU diplomat estimated to me that, with Nord Stream 2, Russia will have 50% over capacity of pipelines to Europe. Russia’s monopoly is artificial. It keeps Central Asian gas out of its half empty pipelines.

Crimean War II? A British Royal Navy destroyer, the HMS Defender, was steaming past Crimea’s Cape Fiolent yesterday morning, when a Russia coast guard vessel fired warning shots and then a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M jet dropped four fragmentation bombs in the Defender’s path. That is the Russian Defense Ministry’s version. The British Defense Ministry’s version is that the Russians were conducting gunnery exercise in the area, and the Defender was traveling in an international recognized shipping lane, from Odesa to

Few things concentrate the brain cells better than a good blackout. ‘Where’s the wifi?’ will arise the collective wail from 30 million Ukrainian smart phone holders. Given Ukraine’s political gridlock over the electricity grid, a therapeutic blackout or two might disabuse people of the notion that electricity always will flow, like water from the tap. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, I spent a total of 10 years reporting in Brazil. In the 1960s, Brazil’s ruling military had a vision

The EU is serious about developing a multi-billion euro hydrogen production industry in Ukraine. That is the message I am hearing from EU diplomats and foreign investors. The message I am not hearing from the Ukrainian government is that they will stop dancing around, set rules of the game, and stick to them – for as long as a decade. A decade may be an eternity to politicians, but it is essential for investors to invest. With Best Regards, Jim

The UBN is going to enjoy the long summer weekend in Odesa. We will be back in your email box on Tuesday morning. Have a good weekend! With Best Regards, Jim Brooke