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Thursday, July 29

“Now is a good time to get vaccinated while the Delta strain has not spread widely through the country,” Habicht told UNIAN. The last wave was Ukraine’s deadliest, taking 18,626 lives nationwide between March 9 and May 6, according to Health Ministry statistics. Over last two months, Ukraine has averaged...

Yesterday, Ukraine recorded in Kyiv the nation’s first fatality from the Delta variant. As of yesterday, there were 17 known Delta patients in Ukraine — in Kyiv, Lviv and Uzhgorod. Most tested positive after visiting Russia. More cases may result from a tightly packed religious pro...

Starting in August, people arriving from Russia and India will have to undergo “mandatory self-isolation or observation for 14 days without the possibility of early termination,” Health Minister Viktor Lyashko told the Cabinet yesterday. “The new Delta coronavirus strain is actively spreading in Europe. A large outbreak is recorde...

By the end of this year, Ukraine expects to receive 47 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Shmygal told the Cabinet yesterday. “This amount of vaccine will be sufficient to fulfill the task of fully vaccinating most Ukrainian adults in 2021,” he said. About 30 million adults ...

With the arrival of Western-made vaccines, Ukrainians’ resistance to vaccination is ebbing. On Tuesday, almost 150,000 people were vaccinated at 2,900 sites nationwide. Since February, 5 million doses have been administered.

“We are ready for the autumn, ” President Zelenskiy told reporters yesterday. “We have 90,000 open beds for patients with coronavirus.”

Editor’s Note : The Ukraine Business News has developed a powerful research tool for businesses, embassies and NGOs – a 1 million word archive of all UBN news dating back to May 2018. Thanks to our powerful new websi...

Wednesday, July 28

Business confidence has returned to pre-pandemic levels of October 2019, reports the central bank. Now, the trend line seems headed to the high levels of the start of the Zelenskiy Presidency. Agriculture and trade were the locomotives of a 4 point increase in the Business...

Remittances by Ukraine’s labor migrants is forecast to reach $13.3 billion this year – 11% higher than the $12 billion recorded in 2019 and 2020 . Labor is expected to remain above metals this year as Ukraine’s second largest export, after food. The rise in labor remittances is “due to the recovery of the economies of countries of destination ...

Ukraine’s shrinking workforce handicaps its economy, said Gennadiy Bobov, the President of Panda, a farming group based in Kyiv region, writes in an essay summarized by UNIAN. “Agricultural companies are faced with huge problems in finding personnel,” h...

DTEK Oil & Gas, Ukraine’s largest private producer, increased its gas production by 10% during the first half, compared to January-June of last year, the company reports. “DTEK Oil & Gas is steadily increasing gas production thanks to systemic investments and the introduction of innovative technologies,” s...

Cargo transport by road and rail has also increased. During the first half of this year, rail cargo was up by almost 3%, to 147 million tons. Road cargo was up by 15.5%, to almost 100 million tons

Ukrainian spending on external travel is rebounding this year to 93% of the pre-pandemic level of 2019, Yuriy Geletiy, the central bank deputy governor, tells Interfax-Ukraine. He has forecast that spending by Ukrainian tourists will increase by 50% from last year’s level, reaching nearly $7 billion to ...

With Instagram rising, the number of Facebook users is decreasing in all regional centers of Ukraine, reported plusone social impact, citing social media research. Facebook has 16 million active users in Ukraine. Instagram now has 15 million users. In the first half of this year, Facebook had these au...

Quote of the Day: “Putin nibbles away at his prey [Ukraine] and has all but declared war. The tragedy is that the United States and Germany have now given him a pipeline with an enormous cash flow that will finance his...

Editor’s Note: The Ukraine Business News has developed a powerful research tool for businesses, embassies and NGOs – a 1 million word archive of all UBN news dating back to May 2018. Thanks to our powerful new websi...

Tuesday, July 27

Half of the EU’s 27 countries now allow Ukrainian tourists, reports Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. Visitors need recent negative results from a PCR test, or a vaccination certificate. The 14 countries are: Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuani...

Editor’s Note : Due to retire in two months, Angela Merkel could easily have kicked the Nord Stream 2 can down the road, letting her successor decide on the Russia-Germany Baltic gas line. Instead, she went out of he...

Monday, July 26

Today Sweden and tomorrow Spain: the EU is opening up to Ukrainian tourists with vaccination certificates or negative PCR tests. In recent days, France and the Netherlands opened under similar conditions. This summer’s ever changing ...

FlixBus, Europe’s largest bus operator, opened new routes last week from Kyiv and Lviv to Ukraine’s biggest destinations for migrant workers and students – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic . The three routes, generally taking around 12 hours, include intermediary stops in each country. Separately, Michal Lehman, regional CEO of FlixBus, has complained about Ukrainian rules: “Due to the ...

In the first half of this year, 4,392 Ukrainians received the Karta Polaka , or Polish Card, which is reserved for people of Polish heritage. The card exempts holders from the need to get a foreigner’s work permit and allows bearers to attend government schools. Last year, 7...

Indicating a revival of Ukraine’s tourism, hotel occupancies jumped into the 60% range in June for Ukraine’s three most popular cities: Kyiv, Odesa and Lviv. Yelyzaveta Rudeleva, head of the Hotel Matrix consultancy, tells Interfax-Ukraine of these jumps in occupancy rates from May: Kyiv to 66%, from 43%; Odesa to 63%, from 53%; and Lviv to 60%, from 41%. ...

So far this year, Kiev has been visited by 308,000 foreign and more than 500,000 domestic tourists, said Maryna Khonda, the Deputy Head of Kyiv City State Administration. She did not offer comparative numbers for 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. According to the State Border Guard Service, the top ...

Ukrainian beach tourists who don’t want to share their sand with Russian tourists have only two more weeks to enjoy Egypt’s Red Sea resorts. Ending nearly six-year suspension, regular flights re-start Aug. 9 from Moscow to Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada. Russia ended all direct flights after the October 31, 2016 terrorist bombing of a Russia...

Over the last year, 1.2 million Ukrainians visited Egypt, Shalaby told reporters in Kyiv on July 15. The influx has been so great that Egypt is starting a Ukrainian language tourism hotline. The country has implemented an electronic visa and allows Ukrainian...

Editor’s Note : Uganda, Uruguay – oops, where was Ukraine? During Friday’s opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics, Russia state TV timed a commercial break to spare viewers the sight of Ukraine’s 155 athletes, march...

Friday, July 23

Editor’s Note: 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 r...

Thursday, July 22

Yesterday Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the compromise, an agreement designed to allow the €9.5 billion pipeline to open this fall. With Angela Merkel’s plan to step down after the September 27 Bundestag elections, the Greens, her party’s main opponents, were scathing. “At a time when Putin is putting massive rhetorical and ...

Although the pipeline is 98% complete, a bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers told Politico that they are considering blocking must-pass appropriations legislation this fall if the Biden administration continues to withhold sanctions o...

Yesterday, Derek Chollet, the adviser to the US Secretary of State, met with Prime Minister Shmyhal and Foreign Minister Kuleba in Kyiv, but not with President Zelenskiy. At the end of the day, the White House announced that President Zelenskiy’s long-awaited visit to the White House will take place August 30. White House Press Secreta...

Enjoying a 20-fold increase in scrap metal export revenues during the first half of this year, Ukraine’s scrap metal dealers association, UAVtormet, is fighting a proposal by Ukrmetallurgprom, the metals industry association, to ban exports of scrap. The year’s run up in world metal prices impa...

The government aims to build infrastructure for 25 new industrial parks for the next three years, said Oleksiy Chernyshov, – the Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine. Speaking at the presidential Ukraine.30 Labor Resources forum, he said: “This will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in related ...

By September, Ukraine expects to receive 13 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses, Prime Minister Shmygal told a cabinet meeting yesterday. This would be enough to fully vaccinate 6.5 million people, about 20% of Ukraine’s adults. To date, 1.5 million Ukrainians have been fully vacc...

Editor’s Note I : Question: Who signed the Budapest Memorandum? Answer: Clinton, Kuchma and Yeltsin. Lesson: Political figures come and go. What counts is the capacity on the ground. When Ukraine’s gas pipeline is take...

Editor’s Note II : 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 als...

Wednesday, July 21

To sell the agreement to Ukraine and Poland, Derek Chollet, State Department counselor, will meet with officials in Kyiv today and in Warsaw tomorrow . His mission’s goal is to discuss “our shared concerns about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and energy security,” the State Department says. A top advisor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chollet ha...

Predicting a cool Ukrainian reception, Timothy Ash wrote: “The optics of this are just stunning. Germany and the USA deciding on Ukraine’s future, without even giving them a seat at the table. It’s perverse that the one country that Nord Stream 2 impacts is ...

About 1.5 million Ukrainians work in Poland, which is three times the number of working in the country in 2014, said Andriy Deschytsia, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, speaking at the Ukraine 30. Human Capital Forum yesterday. Over the period 2014 – 2021, the number of Ukrainian-owned companies has increa...

Without Ukrainian workers, the Czech economy would misfire, said Yevhen Perebiynis, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Czech Republic. “Without Ukrainian workers – and this is confirmed by almost everyone – the Czech Republic today would not be able to li...

With an unemployment rate below 3%, the Czech Republic adopted a “Ukraine Project,” quadrupling the annual quota of work visas to 40,000 . “According to Czech employers, Ukrainian workers are very hardworking, they learn quickly, there is practically no language barrier and therefore they are highly valued here,” said the Ukrainian Amb...

The number of Ukrainians citizens working in Portugal has dropped by two thirds over the last decade – from 100,000 to 30,000 today, said Inna Ognivets, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Portugal. “This is mainly due not to the massive departure from the country, but primarily to the acquisition of Portuguese ...

Economy Minister Oleksii Lyubchenko summed up, telling the forum: “We are leaders in Europe in terms of the number of able-bodied people working abroad.” Looking ahead, he said: “We must replace the phrase ‘I want to leave’ with ‘I want to return....

Ukraine’s adult population is divided in thirds, said Lyubchenko. There are 11 million people officially employed. There are also 11 million people who are paid in cash, off the books. And there are 11 million retirees who receive social security pa...

Due to last week’s heat wave, electricity consumption grew by almost 6%, reported Ukrenergo, the national power transmission company. With the average daily temperatures increasing by 2°С, air conditioning use surged. Compared to the same week last year, electricity usage ...

With more people swimming to escape the hot weather, 265 people drowned in Ukraine in the first three weeks of July . This represents one third of all 808 water deaths so far this year. Last Saturday, Kyiv authorities banned all swimming on city beaches, due to heavy pollution and algae blooms.

Starting today, Covid-19 vaccination are open to all Ukrainian adults who sign up through the Diia app. Health Minister Victor Lyashko said. “You can get vaccinated at your nearest vaccination point, or mass vaccination center,” he said. Ukraine administers four kinds of vaccines; AstraZeneca, Moderna, ...

Expecting a surge of the Delta variant in September, the Health Ministry is proposing a 14-day self-isolation period for unvaccinated foreign visitors. People who have negative PCR tests would have only seven days in isolation. Prime Minister Shmyhal recommends creating vaccination stations at border crossings.

Editor’s Note : 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 yesterd...

Tuesday, July 20

The corona virus pandemic is not deterring Ukrainians from working in the EU. Last year, the number of Ukrainians officially working in Poland rose by 8%, to 775,000. Remittances from Ukrainians working abroad – largely in the EU – is expected to increase this year by 8%, to $1...

Employment experts estimate that the real number of Ukrainians working in Poland is 1-1.5 million. Vasily Voskoboynik, the President of the Ukrainian Association of Companies for International Employment, estimates that 3-5 million Ukrainian citizens now work abroad. For Ukrainian blue collar worke...