The currency swap concluded by the National Bank of Ukraine with the National Bank of Poland and the right granted to Ukrainian banks to buy hryvnia in cash from foreign financial institutions for non-cash currency in the amount of up to EUR1 million per day (in equivalent) made it possible to launch such an exchange without major losses in Poland and 5 other countries, the NBU said.
“On March 25, the agreement that we concluded with the National Bank of Poland on the exchange of Ukrainian hryvnia for Polish zlotys by Ukrainian citizens in Poland began to work,” the National Bank of Ukraine noted on Facebook.
He clarified that in Poland, which accounted for over 2/3 of all refugees, Ukrainians can apply to separate branches of PKO Bank Polski. The limit for such an exchange is up to 10 thousand UAH in cash per person in banknotes with a face value of 100 to 1000 UAH. To exchange, you need to have a passport in the form of an ID-card or a valid international passport.
In Hungary, cash hryvnia is exchanged by OTP Bank: in its branches, Ukrainian citizens can exchange hryvnia for Hungarian forints within the limit of UAH 15,000. for one transaction.
In addition, the bank offers to open a forint account for Ukrainians aged 18 years and over (from 14 to 18 years of age, the presence of parents or legal guardians is required) in special branches of OTP Bank in Hungary that provide this service, if they have a valid passport or travel document.
In Moldova, to support citizens of Ukraine, OTP Bank will carry out foreign exchange transactions with Ukrainian currency in its branches located in the border regions of Moldova and some branches in Chisinau, on the basis of an internal or international passport of Ukraine. The hryvnia exchange limit is up to UAH 3,000 per client per day.
In Romania, the exchange of Ukrainian hryvnia for Romanian lei is carried out by Banca Comercială Română: 11 branches of this bank near the border with Ukraine are additionally supported by cash to help Ukrainians crossing the border of this country. Citizens of Ukraine can exchange hryvnias for up to 1,000 Romanian lei per person (at the official rate of almost UAH 6.5 thousand) with a valid passport.
In Slovakia, Tatra banka, a subsidiary of the Raiffeisen group, offers to exchange hryvnia for euros. The daily limit per person is EUR250. When exchanging money, citizens of Ukraine must provide a valid passport.
So far, the exchange takes place in Bratislava at the head office of the bank in the Tatracentrum shopping center, and additional exchange points should soon appear in Humenny and Michalovci. In addition, Ukrainians will be able to open an account at Tatra banka branches, to which cash hryvnia will be credited to a payment card in accordance with the euro exchange rate.
In Austria, you can exchange cash hryvnia for euros at Raiffeisen bank and Erste Bank Oesterreich branches if you have a passport. at Raiffeisen bank one person can exchange up to EUR500 per day, and at Erste Bank Oesterreich up to EUR300.
“At the same time, we continue to recommend to everyone who intends to evacuate abroad not to take cash hryvnia with them, but to deposit it into their bank accounts in Ukraine. After all, having a payment card, you can pay without cash and withdraw money from ATMs abroad,” – the National Bank noted and reminded that it did not introduce any restrictions on non-cash payments both within the country and abroad.
U.S. President Joe Biden will join on Saturday a meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with their Ukrainian counterparts Dmytro Kuleba and Secretary of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov, U.S. media said, citing the White House pool.
“This morning, President Biden will drop by a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Ukrainian Defense Secretary Oleksiy Reznikov,” according to the statement.
Biden is in Poland and will deliver a speech on the situation in Ukraine on Saturday evening in Warsaw.
A field hospital manufactured in Estonia with the financial support of Germany has opened in Ukraine, the Estonian Ministry of Defense has said.
“The military field hospital sent to Ukraine is now working as intended. This small and mobile hospital can quickly get to where it is needed. Made in Estonia with German financial support,” the ministry said on Saturday.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has approved a loan from the French Development Agency for a total amount of up to EUR 300 million in 2022.
“State external borrowing in 2022 is carried out by raising a loan from the French Development Agency for a total amount that does not exceed EUR 300 million and is provided in accordance with a loan agreement between Ukraine represented by the Finance Minister as a borrower and the French Development Agency as a creditor, within provided for by the law on the 2022 national budget of Ukraine,” the government said in resolution No. 358 dated March 24.
According to the terms, the loan amount bears interest at a fixed annual interest rate of 1.04%, which is paid every six months.
The final repayment of the loan is carried out after 15 years from the date of conclusion of the loan agreement (taking into account the grace period for deferring loan repayment for a period of five years from the date of conclusion of the loan agreement).
Losses among civilians from February 24, 2022, when Russia started the war against Ukraine, to 00:00 on March 24, 2022, amounted to 2,788 civilian casualties (2,685 in the report a day earlier), including 1,081 killed (1,035), the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said on Friday.
“OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration,” the UN said in the document.
According to it, this concerns, for example, Mariupol and Volnovakha (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Severodonetsk and Rubizhne (Luhansk region), and Trostianets (Sumy region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.
“Most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes,” the UN said.
According to confirmed UN data, some 219 men, some 165 women, some 30 boys and 15 girls killed, while the gender of 48 children and 604 adults has not yet been determined.
Among the 1,707 wounded, some 28 girls and 23 boys, as well as 69 children, whose gender has not yet been determined.
Compared to the previous day, according to the UN, three children were killed and two were wounded.
OHCHR said that in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as of midnight on March 25, there were 285 (255) killed and 672 (646) wounded in government-controlled territory, and some 59 (56) killed and 224 (211) wounded in territory controlled by self-proclaimed “republics.”
In other regions of Ukraine under government control (in Kyiv, as well as in Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions), the UN recorded 737 (724) killed and 811 (793) wounded.
The report also states that, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, as of 08:00 on March 25, some 135 (128) children were killed and 184 (172) wounded.
In addition, OHCHR said the report of the National Police of Kharkiv region, according to which, as of 18:00 on March 24, some 306 (294) civilians, including 15 (15) children, were killed in the region.
The increase in indicators in this report compared to the figures in the previous report should not be attributed only to new cases that occurred on March 24, since OHCHR also verified a number of cases that occurred in previous days during the day, the UN said in the document.
Ukraine will carry out a sowing campaign wherever there are no active hostilities, as of March 25, some 150,000 hectares of agricultural land have been sown in the country, the website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food reported on Friday.
These indicators are 1.5 times higher than last year – as of March 25, 2021, some 106,000 hectares of agricultural land were sown in Ukraine as part of the spring sowing campaign.
“We already see that in Kherson, Odesa, Mykolaiv, in spite of everything, the sowing campaign has begun under Ukrainian flags,”, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy Taras Vysotsky said.
It is clarified that due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation in Ukraine this season, a decrease in the area under high-margin crops (sunflower and corn) is expected while increasing the area under crops that are easier to produce, but important from the point of view of food security – peas, barley and oats.
“These crops used to be niche, but they are simpler in terms of technology, and, nevertheless, important for people’s nutrition. Therefore, there will be such a shift from export-oriented crops to food crops for domestic consumption,” Vysotsky specified.
According to the ministry, Russian aggression will lead to a reduction in the area under crops in Ukraine by a third, which threatens the food security of 100 million residents of countries importing Ukrainian agricultural products, mainly from North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
