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“We want to unite the West and the East with a big highway,” Zelenskiy said yesterday, speaking at the inauguration of the first section of Zaporizhia’s bridge over the Dnipro. Providing a new, international standard route to Stryi and the EU, the M-10 is expected to quickly double its traffic, to 40,000 vehicles a day.

With a two-year budget of $500 million, the M-30 saw 580 km restored this year. Another 750 km are to be repaired by the end of next year. For now, the high-speed road will terminate in Pokrovsk, Donetsk. Most of the final 200 km, through Luhansk to the Russian border, are in the Russia-controlled section of the Donbas.

Ukraine’s Cabinet has approved a $20 billion development plan to rebuild the Ukraine-controlled half of the Donbas. Although multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and the EBRD, are funding infrastructure projects in Ukraine-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk, little private investment has followed.

Road repair was the most popular phenomenon of 2020, winning the approval of 93% of 2,004 participants in a nationwide poll. The poll was conducted in the first half of December for the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The most unpopular phenomena were the war in the Donbas and the coronavirus epidemic, winning negativity ratings of 99.2% and 99.4% respectively.

The Infrastructure Ministry plans to start laying European gauge track in Ukraine next year, Krikliy told Interfax-Ukraine. The priorities are two sections of Ukrzaliznytsia’s track to the Polish border. Construction of 80 km from Lviv west to the border crossing at Mostyska, would create a direct Lviv-EU link capable of generating traffic of 600,000 passengers a year, the railway calculates. Further north, construction of a similar 65 km Euro-gauge line west from Kovel to the Polish border would allow the

By opening Ukraine’s 13 state-owned seaports to private companies through concessions, the government hopes to draw $1.8 billion in private investment through 2038. These concessions – largely renting wharves, land, cranes and warehouses – would generate almost 5,000 new jobs, according to a new Seaports Development Strategy approved yesterday by the Cabinet of Ministers.

The European Investment Bank Board has approved a €270 million loan to upgrade Boryspil Airport, the Bank’s website reports. The money would cover about three quarters of a €351 million Boryspil renewal project. The upgrade will focus largely on the Western runway, a 3,500-meter concrete strip “which has been operating for more than 50 years and is in poor condition,” the Bank says. The loan is covered by EU guarantees, which means the contractor must follow EU procurement rules. Last

Construction is to start next summer on a 4-year, $500 million project to build Ukraine’s largest and most modern ski area in Lviv’s Carpathian Mountains. Based in Volosianka, a 3-hour train ride south of Lviv city, the area is to have more than 60 trails. Its technology and design are to be one decade ahead of Bukovel, says the developer, OKKO Group Holding. The prime mover is Vitaliy Antonov, OKKO’s founder and main shareholder. A native of nearby Stryi, Antonov

Outgoing US President Donald Trump vetoed yesterday the US defense budget, a document that includes $275 million in military support for Ukraine and tighter sanctions on Western companies involved in Nord Stream 2, the Russia-Germany gas pipeline. Trump returned the budget to the House of Representatives, calling it “a gift for China and Russia.” The House is expected to return Monday to vote on an override. Joe Biden is to be inaugurated President on Jan. 20.

US Aid to Ukraine is coming under threat from a different direction – dissatisfaction over the coronavirus stimulus bill, which would give payments of $600 per person. On Tuesday, President Trump called the checks “ridiculously low,” calling for payments of $2,000. A growing debate focuses US foreign aid, including the $453 million military and civilian aid planned for Ukraine this year. “This is a sensitive area for voters and lawmakers,” writes Newsweek. “Though foreign aid typically makes up around one

Over the next week, Ukraine will attract a 6-month loan from Deutsche Bank of up to $350 million, the Cabinet of Ministers resolved yesterday. The move to take a bridge loan indicates that the government only expects to get a second tranche from last summer’s IMF agreement by the end of May. The IMF tranche is to be for $700 million. The Cabinet’s resolution authorizes a loan at LIBOR + 5.75%, or almost 6%. By contrast, at the Finance Ministry’s

The Cabinet of Ministers approved yesterday a bill to resume privatization of large state-owned companies, a process suspended last March due to the coronavirus outbreak. With investors now familiar with road shows on Zoom, the government wants the Rada to unfreeze ‘large’ privatizations. Slated to bring almost $500 million to the budget in 2021, the privatization plan calls for selling next year: five thermal power plants, three regional power plants, the former Bolshevik plant, the Odesa port plant, the United

By Jan. 4, acting Energy Minister Yuriy Vitrenko is to prepare a solution for paying the $921 million solar and wind power debt owed by the government’s Guarantee Buyer. Prime Minister Shmygal set the deadline at yesterday’s Cabinet of Ministers meeting.

Today, the first cars are to roll across the first completed section of Zaporizhzhia’s new road bridge over the Dnipro. Long lampooned as the city’s white elephant, the unfinished bridge saw construction resume last year by a Turkish construction company. The first leg of the completed bridge crosses the ‘Old Dnipro’– the narrower channel that separates Khortytsia Island and the right bank community of Baburka.

The Infrastructure Ministry plans to restore 50% more roads in 2021 than this year, Minister Vladyslav Krikliy told Interfax-Ukraine in a wide-ranging interview. The 2021 goal is now 6,800 km. “Another three years at this rate, and we have all roads of national importance will be built – international and national roads for sure,” Krikliy said.

Planning to open select highway sections to privately built and operated toll roads, the Cabinet of Ministers yesterday set tolls, measured in Euros. For cars, motorcycles and minibuses up to 10 seats, the toll will be €2.3 for 100 km. For trucks up to 12 tons and buses up to 29 seats, the toll will be €4.5 for 100 km. For big trucks and buses, the toll will be €13.3 for 100 km. For example, to drive a car down

New Jersey’s Holtec International has completed the first $70 million stage of a 20-year, $1.3 billion project to build a nuclear spent fuel storage repository near Chornobyl. The site will take waste from three of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants – Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, South Ukraine. Ukraine’s fourth plant, Zaporizhzhia, has its own onsite, US-designed storage facility. Ukraine’s new central repository, located three km west of the abandoned Chornobyl power station and 150 km north of Kyiv, is to start accepting

Stainless steel nuclear waste canisters, each weighing almost 200 tons, will arrive by rail at the repository site in Yaniv, Kyiv Oblast. Over the next six months, Ukrzaliznytsia crews are to reopen 43 km of track west to Vilkhova, Zhytomyr. This line was abandoned after the 1986 disaster. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power operator, will run this line through the Exclusion Zone. After last year’s boom in Chornobyl tourism, Kyiv tour operators are interested in using the restored rail line.

Holtec will supply the first 94 containers — a $300 million contract. Simultaneously, Ukraine is to use Holtec technology to start making its own canisters, for domestic use and export. Yesterday, UNIAN reviewed the storage project in a 2,000-word analysis. Noting that Holtec is using the same dry storage equipment in Belgium, Sweden, the UK and the US, the news agency concludes that Ukraine’s repository “will be the most modern and safest nuclear fuel storage facility in its class.”

During this decade, Ukraine’s electricity production from nuclear will rise from 53% today, to 57% in 2030. At the same time, the electricity share from coal will drop almost in half, to 12%. These were the predictions made yesterday by Maksym Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest privately owned energy company. Coal-fired power plants increasingly be used as standby sources of electricity, predicted Timchenko, whose company employs thousands of coal miners and operates most of Ukraine’s coal-fired power plants.