President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that a trend in number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the country is optimistic, however one should not be careless about the infection. The president’s press service said that on Tuesday, during a regular meeting on the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine, the head of state was informed that the number of new COVID-19 cases in Ukraine in the past 24 hours was 260 and 356 patients have recovered.
“The coronavirus epidemic has forced us all to make new decisions and accept new living conditions. All countries in the world have revised their approaches. Today’s trend in the number of those who fell ill and those who recovered inspires hope that we have passed the first challenges with dignity. However, this does not mean that we should be careless with coronavirus infection. We will do everything to guarantee the safety of Ukrainians,” Zelensky said.
Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine Oleksiy Chernyshov informed the president that so far almost all regions have paid 300% bonuses to medical workers who worked with COVID-19 patients in March. Three regions will resolve this issue in the coming days.
Also, some regions have already started paying bonuses for April, and by the end of the week the Cabinet of Ministers expects a significant increase in the number of agreements with the National Health Service, which is necessary to make these payments.
Main reasons for mortality of the Ukraine’s population in Jan-Feb 2020
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister for Judicial Reform, Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zakharieva agreed to step up bilateral cooperation, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
“The two focused on urgent issues of the development of Ukrainian-Bulgarian relations in the political, economic and consular spheres, as well as the problems of protecting national minorities,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday.
Kuleba and Zakharieva also discussed measures taken by the governments of both countries to counter the spread of coronavirus. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine thanked the Bulgarian counterpart for the decision made by the Bulgarian government to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in the form of protective equipment for Ukrainian doctors.
The foreign ministers exchanged invitations to pay bilateral visits.
Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach has made public audio materials that may indicate the influence of ex-Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden on the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. “We will unveil recordings of telephone conversations with voices similar to those of Petro Poroshenko and Joseph Biden, testifying to the facts of international corruption and state treason at the highest state level,” Derkach said during an online conference at Interfax-Ukraine agency on Tuesday.
According to Derkach, he received the recordings from investigative journalists, and Poroshenko personally did the recording of the conversations.
The first topic of the recordings, the deputy noted, concerns the receipt of “$1 billion in exchange for maintaining Burisma schemes and international corruption.” The records, as Derkach notes, date back to 2015-2016, in particular, they refer to the need to dismiss Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin at that time, “who was investigating the Burisma case and tapped into Biden at that time.”
“Biden leaves for Kyiv to put pressure on Petro Oleksiyovych regarding Shokin. There’s a powerful argument … in Biden’s pocket … a $1 billion loan guarantees … such was a price to save Biden from prison,” Derkach said.
The deputy claims that the $1 billion received was used to get military government orders by enterprises related to Poroshenko.
The second topic of the recordings, according to Derkach, concerns the collapse of the parliamentary coalition and the upcoming elections in February 2016. “Poroshenko admits that there is no coalition … instead of fulfilling the requirements of the Constitution and declaring a re-election, Petro Oleksiyovych held to the promises given to Biden personally and blocked the Cabinet’s dismissal,” Derkach explained.
“These conversations clearly show … Biden ruled Ukraine,” the deputy said.
Also, according to him, the audio recordings say about Biden’s influence through the supervisory boards of large state enterprises.
“We handed over all the hours-long records we have at our disposal together with a statement about high treason, as well as of facts of international corruption to the Prosecutor General’s Office … for registering criminal proceedings,” Derkach summed up.
He also added that, in his opinion, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Dmytro Razumkov “blocks the creation of the inquiry commission … which is a violation of the law on regulations.” “Such a commission could effectively investigate the facts of international corruption,” Derkach said.
Former prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk, who was present at the press conference, added that Ruslan Riaboshapka, when he was the prosecutor general, “completely stopped the investigation of economic crimes of the Yanukovych regime and stopped the $6 billion budget confiscation planned for 2019.”
“A report has been prepared on this fact that Riaboshapka had committed the crimes pursuant to Articles 349, 364 and 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine … it is about interference with the activities of a law enforcement officer, abuse of power, exceeding of the limits of authority and disclosure of the secrets of pretrial investigation. I hope that the monitoring over the investigation will be organized by Ukrainian parliamentarians … I consider it necessary to initiate the creation of a temporary investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada to investigate opposition to the investigation of economic criminal cases of the Yanukovych regime,” Kulyk said.
Nova Poshta Global (NPG), a member of Nova Poshta group of companies, launches scheduled flights from/to the United States and China.
The company’s press service said on Tuesday that flights by the order of Nova Poshta Global will be operated several times a week and deliver both parcels from Ukraine and purchases made by Ukrainians in online stores of these countries.
Together with partners, the company has already launched six scheduled flights, namely, five flights to/from the United States and one to/from China. Four flights in the direction of Warsaw-New York-Warsaw are operated by European airlines Lufthansa and LOT, and one weekly direct flight Kyiv-New York-Kyiv of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA). Nova Poshta Global launched another weekly flight to/from China in cooperation with the Ukrainian company SkyUp.
“We launched scheduled flights with our regular partners Lufthansa, LOT and UIA, and last week we began cooperation with Ukrainian airline SkyUp. The first flight of this airline has already delivered 1,801 parcels for our customers with a total weight of 17 tonnes, including both individual orders and commercial goods. This is only part of the parcels that Nova Poshta Global delivers to Ukraine from China weekly. We deliver on average about 25,000 parcels weighing more than 38 tonnes per week from the United States,” the press service said, citing Nova Poshta Global CEO Yuriy Benevytsky.
According to Nova Poshta Global, orders from the United States increased by 4.7 times in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, which was due to cooperation with the American online store iHerb, namely, some 230,000 parcels with a total weight of 360 tonnes were delivered from that store for the first quarter of 2020.
According to the data provided, the number of deliveries of NP Shopping service has also increased in particular some 81,000 parcels were delivered in the first quarter, which is 32% more than in the same period in 2019.
However, the company’s customers began not only to order more from abroad, but also to send abroad. Thus, for the first quarter of 2020, the volume of export shipments of individuals increased by 12%, and business customer shipments doubled compared to the same period in 2019. Almost 78% are parcels and goods, some 12% are documents.
Nova Poshta Global (formerly Nova Poshta International) has been providing international express delivery services since 2015, and is part of the Nova Poshta group of companies. Nova Poshta Global is developing the NP Shopping service – the delivery from online stores in the United States, China, Britain and Poland, provides import and export services for businesses and the ability to ship from any Nova Poshta branch to most countries of the world.
Ukraine should re-look at the development of nuclear power generation, including focusing on the implementation of projects that increase the ability to maneuver, acting Minister of Energy and Environmental Protection Olha Buslavets has said.
Commenting on the relevance of the Ukraine-EU Energy Bridge project in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, she said that, in the context of the construction of new facilities, it is more advisable to focus on the construction of small modular reactors (SMR).
“The decisions on the energy bridge are related to the completion of reactors three and four of the Khmelnytsky NPP. My personal expert conviction: we need to reconsider what exactly needs to be developed in nuclear power generation. If we talk about new construction, we should talk about small modular reactors with the possibility of regulation. We already have a power system that is very overloaded with basic capacities. Energoatom is 55% of our electricity production, which, I will remind you, is not regulated,” she said.
In addition, Buslavets expressed the opinion that for Ukraine, which plans to synchronize with the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) by 2023, it would be more expedient to focus all its efforts on this project.
“When it [the energy bridge project] was only being worked out, I did not see the point in a separate project if there were plans for general synchronization with the European system. It would be more expedient to focus all efforts on general integration, rather than being distracted by some separate projects and give separate conditions,” the acting minister said.
