Editor’s Note: Ukraine’s cash economy – and financial fraud – go back 2,000 years. Archeologists scouting the path of Lviv’s Northern Bypass Road found a small hoard four silver Roman denarii. In circulation from th...
In the waning months of the Trump Administration, Erik Prince, an American private security entrepreneur, attempted to exert pressure on the Ukrainian government to accept his buyout offer for the Motor Sich aircraft engine factory in Zaporizhia , according to an article that was published in Time magazine. Headlined “Documents Reveal Erik Prince’s $10 Billion Plan to Make Weapons and Create a Private Army in Ukraine,” the report by Sim... #EricPinceandMotorSich #motorSich2021 #MotorSichandUSA
Although Kyiv’s traffic ranks the third worst in Europe, Ukrainians love affair with cars only grows. In a survey of 10,000 drivers by OLX, 7% of respondents would car pool, 12% agree with bans on cars in city centers, and 73% say the solution is bigger roads and better intersections. As summarized by... #KyivTraffic2021 #UkrainiansKeepbuyingCars #worstTrafficKyiv
Kharkiv airport handled 5% more passengers last month than during June 2019, the pre-pandemic year. Strong international travel from Ukraine’s second largest city pushed the monthly total to 126,900, the airport reports. Domestic passengers dropped 44% yoy, to 10,500. International travel increased ... #KharkivAirport #KharkivAirport2021 #KharkivAirportPassangerTraffic
Editor’s Note: 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 ...
Free trade talks with Indonesia and Vietnam are part of “a large-scale program of free trade agreements with partners around the world, ” said Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s Trade Representative, at the Ukraine 30 International Politics Forum yesterday. Predicting that Ukraine will sign “dozens” of free trade pacts, he said: “We are actively...
France’s Alstom plans to sign a €882 million contract with UZ to supply 130 electric locomotives for hauling freight , the company has reported. Last week, the Rada ratified a France-Ukraine agreement on supplying the locomotives, which are to have 35% local content. France is providing loans to cover 85% of the dea...
Concorde Capital’s Alexander Paraschiy notes the announcement comes as UZ markets this week a 5-year, $300 million Eurobond. He writes: “There is still a high chance that the final version of the resolution (if any) will imply a lower rates upgrade due to expected lobbying pressure from key railway customers (iron ore and c...
Two week ahead of President Zelenskiy’s planned visit to the White House, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken listed five key reforms needed for Ukraine . In a video address to the Ukraine reform conference in Vilnius, Blinken called for: transparent selection of judges; ensuring that leaders of governmental anti-corruption entities are selected in a ...
Concorde Capital’s James Hydzik wrote: “The conference is important for laying out the expectations of all partners before German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Volodymyr Zelensky visit Washington. The level of coordination and lay...
Aerogestion, a French airline consulting company based near Paris Orly airport, is advising Ukraine’s government on the establishment next year of a national airline , said Tymoshenko, the presidential aide, yesterday. The airline’s fleet is to be composed of leased aircraft for EU and long haul flights and Ukrainian-made Antonov for domestic flights.
Rivne is to become the 12th domestic destination for Windrose Airlines flights from Kyiv Boryspil, Tymoshenko said. Currently, Rivne’s airport offers only vacation charters. Located midway between Kyiv and Lviv, the city is a four-hour drive from Kyiv. At the same time, Windrose probably will incre...
Editor’s Note : 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 ...
Editor’s Note: 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 Zhytom...
The number of trains on the main China-Europe crossing in Kazakhstan rose by 41% in the first half of 2021, compared to the same six months last year, reports Xinhua. So far this year, 3,033 freight trains passed through the Alashankou-Dostyk border crossing. The volume of goods increased by 56%, to 2.3 mil... #ChinaEuropeTrains #ChinaEUtrainstoUkraine #FreightTrainsfromChina #TrainsfromChinatoEU
Today President Zelenskiy flies to Vilnius for the 4th Ukraine Reform Conference, the first to be held in two years, due to the Covid pandemic. Gathering political leaders, business leaders, and international donors, the two-day conference is designed to give international impetus to free market, pro-EU economic cha... #ZelenskiyinVilnius
Lviv airport has come to life with new flights to Baku, Frankfurt, Riga, Tel Aviv and Vienna. Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines airline have launched night flights from the airport to Frankfurt and Vienna. UIA resumed flights to Tel Aviv. AirBaltic resumed flights to Riga. SkyUp has started serv... #BoryspilAirportflights #FlightstoUkraine
Editor’s Note: 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 e...
The largest Sea Breeze naval exercise in history, “shows everyone that we will not allow the restriction of freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, ” President Zelenskiy said yesterday in Odesa. Zelenskiy listed international class navy ships scheduled for delivery by 2024 to Ukraine’s Naval Forces: Turkey – corvettes; US – Mark VI high spe... #BlackSea2021 #BlackSeaExercise2021 #SeaBreezenavalexercise
As Zelenskiy spoke, 32 ships, 40 airplanes and helicopters and sailors Nfrom 24 countries participated in the naval maneuvers. Kristina A Kvien, the US Chargé, noted that US Navy Seabees construction engineers helped build a Black Sea operations center for Ukraine’s Navy in Ochakiv, Mykolaiv, and ‘Naval Base East’, a Ukrainia... #BlackSeaBreezemaneuvers #BlackSeanavalmaneuvers #BlackSeaOperation
Gazprom is holding off sending more gas through Ukraine to the EU this summer, forcing up prices and “sending a clear sign it is waiting for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be commissioned,” Reuters reports from Moscow. “One could see this as a strategy to push Nord Stream 2 to co...
New car sales increased by 30% during the first half of this year, compared to the same January-June period last year, reports Ukravtoprom, the vehicle industry association. Last year, despite the Covid-induced recession, car sales dropped only 3%, compared to 2019. ... #Carsales2021 #CarSalesinUkraine2021 #NewCarSalesUkraine
Growth of electric cars are lagging, increasing by only 12%, from January through May, compared to the same period last year, reports Ukravtoprom. Last year, 7,095 electric cars were sold in Ukraine. Used cars account for about 90% of electric cars sold here. T... #ElectricCarsImport #ElectricCarsinUkraine #ElectricCarsSales #ImportofElectricCars
The EU is opening up for the minority of Ukrainians who have completed the two-shot Covid vaccination cycle. At last count this would be 766,718 people – about 2.5% of Ukrainian adults. While the rules change frequently, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Romania now accept Ukrainian tourists who have be... #CovidUkraine #TravelingwithVaccination #VaccinationUkraine
In tourism dependent southern Europe – Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey, and Slovenia – Ukrainians are allowed entry with a negative PCR-test taken no more than 72-hours before entry. With Ukraine’s new Covid cases down to 377 yesterday morning, the lowest level in a year, Albania and ... #TourismtoEurope #TravelingtoEuropefromUkraine #UkraininanscantraveltoEurope
This month, Ukraine will receive millions of doses of American-made Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to Health Minister Viktor Lyashko. For the first time, the Moderna vaccine comes to Ukraine – 2 million doses. In addition, several million Pfizer doses are to arrive this month, according t... #pfizerforUkraine #pfizervaccination #pfizervaccineforUkraine
Editor’s Note: 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 vaccina...
In a heat wave that could affect grain harvests, 10 temperature records were set in Kyiv in June . The average monthly air temperature in Kyiv city in June was 21.3 °C. This is 1.8 °C above the norm for June. #GrainHarvest2021 #Harvest2021 #HeatWaveUkraine
Ukraine started yesterday issuing internationally recognized Covid certificates through the Diya app. As of yesterday, 710,996 Ukrainians had received both vaccine doses, making them eligible for a certificate. Ukrainian Covid certificates are in the EU’s repository of Covid certificates and should be... #CovidCertificates #UkraineCovidCertificates
Yesterday, the EU started issuing its own Covid certificates . Each country of the EU-27 can make up its own entry rules. For example, Austria requires that Ukrainians take a PCR test on arrival and undergo as least five days of quarantine. #EUcovidSertificates #EuropeanCovidCertificates
Ukrzaliznytsia yesterday resumed international rail service to Slovakia, notably between Mukachevo and Košice. On June 1st, Ukraine resumed its rail service to Austria and Hungary.
Kuwait-Kyiv flights are to commence on July 13 . Jazeera Airways will fly twice a week between the two capitals. Flynas, the discount Saudi carrier, starts flights tomorrow between Lviv and Riyadh. Flynas will also fly to Lviv from two other Saudi... #FlightstoKuwait #KuwaitUkraineFlights
Improving taxi service at Kyiv Boryspil is a top priority for the new airport director, Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov writes on Facebook. Yesterday, Oleksiy Dubrevsky was chosen as the new director of Ukraine’s busiest airport. Currently the director of Zaporozhia airport, D... #AirportBoryspilTaxi #BoryspilAirport
Due to a lack of drivers, Uber is raising its rates in Kyiv this month by about 30%. Rivals Uklon and Bolt are expected to follow suit. #UberRasesRates #UberUkraine
Just in time for tomorrow night’s England-Ukraine football match, a new sports channel, XSport+, launched yesterday in Ukraine. Commercial-free and dedicated almost entirely to Ukrainian sports, the channel is distributed by IPTV and OTT. #NewSportChannel #SportChannelUkraine #xSportChannel
Editor’s Note : 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
Editor’s Note : 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 consolid...
The Rada approved two laws yesterday that may clear the way for a resumption of IMF lending in September 2021. The parliament has restored jail sentences for officials who lie on declarations of their assets and on assets of close relatives. Neglecting to list an asset worth over $150,000 could be punished by ... #IncomeDeclaration #OfficialsDeclarations #UkraineIncome
The parliament also approved a law that will give international legal specialists veto power in a commission that will hire and fire judges . The US Embassy welcomed this approval as “an important step forward toward comprehensive judicial reform.” #JudicalReform2021 #JudicalReformUkraine #PermissiontoFireJudges #UkraineLawIssues
Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd AG, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, is opening an office in Odesa , the company reports. “Ukraine is also an attractive export market for Hapag-Lloyd due to its wealth of various mineral resources and one of the world’s largest agricultural industries,” the Ha... #ContainerShippingUkraine #HapagLloydAGOdesa
Drivers paid almost $10 million in speeding fines during the first year of traffic cameras in Ukraine, reports OpenDataBot. Today, the cameras record about 112,000 violations every month, about one quarter the level of June 2020. While the number of accidents in Kyiv and Kyiv Region has cha... #SeedControlCameras #SpeedControlCamerasFines #TrafficCamerasUkraine
Editor’s Note: 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 Ce...
Zelenskiy signed a law yesterday that authorizes automatic recordings of overweight trucks and empowers Ukrtransbezpeka, the highway safety agency, to collect fines in court. With the country in the midst of a multi-year, multi-billion dollar road building campaign, the new law is design to... #OverWeightTrucksControl #OverweightTrucksUkraine
During the first half of this year, Ukrzaliznytsia has sold 143,000 tons of scrap metal earning $44 million. The sales are through electronic auctions on Prozorro.Sales and proceeds go to renovating train cars and locomotives, says Yuryk. #ScrapMetalSale #ScrapMetalUkraine #UZsoldScrapMetal
Editor’s Note: 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 Pysa...
Looking ahead, the government is working on accomplishing five ‘visa-free’ relationships with the EU, by the end of President Zelenskiy’s term, in 2024. Shmygal writes. For industry, the goal is to align Ukrainian standards with EU ones, allowing managers to get EU certificates in Ukraine. For aviatio... #EUandUkrainevisaFree #NovisatoEUforUkraine #VisaFreewithEU
China threatened to withhold delivery of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine until the Zelenskiy government withdrew its support for more scrutiny of human rights in Xinjiang, the AP reported Friday from Geneva. On Tuesday, Ukraine was one of 40 countries supporting the investigation. On Thursday, Ukraine’s name had been removed. China is Ukraine’s largest single nation tra... #ChineseCovid19Vaccine #ChineseVaccineforUkraine
A record 97,130 Ukrainians were vaccinated Friday, the Health Ministry reported. Since the February start of the vaccination campaign, 550,966 people have been fully vaccinated – a status that allows them to visit many EU countries. In July, Ukraine i... #VaccianationrateUkraine #VaccinationinUkraine2021
Starting Friday, all citizens of Britain, India, Russia and Portugal are to be tested at Ukraine’s border checkpoints for the new Delta coronavirus strain. Kyiv Boryspil and Kyiv Sikorsky airports perform the needed antigen tests for $25. Results are ready within 30 minutes. Foreigners who fail the test will be denied entry. Ukrainians who fail the test ... #BoryspilCovidTests #CovidTestsforForeignTravelersatBoryspil
Editor’s Note: 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...
