The Ministry of Energy intends to create two industry-specific cyber centers in the electric power and oil and gas sectors on the basis of previously created cyber centers at NPC Ukrenergo and NJSC Naftogaz, Farid Safarov, Deputy Minister of Energy for Digital Development, Digital Transformation and Digitalization, said.
“The Ministry of Energy sent a draft order to the Cabinet of Ministers on the definition of two industry centers. In it, the two cyber centers created on the basis of Naftogaz and Ukrenergo were referred to as industry cyber centers. It is assumed that Ukrenergo will be responsible for the energy sector, for the oil and gas industries – Naftogaz, – Safarov said at an online briefing “Cyber threats in war: cyber attacks on Ukrainian regional energy companies” on Tuesday.
According to him, such proposals were developed as part of an agreement with the National Security and Defense Council and the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as interaction with the government’s CERT-UA computer incident response team.
The Deputy Minister explained that industry cyber centers will be built on the principle of a pyramid.
“At the first level, the enterprises themselves must carry out organizational and technical actions in order to prevent possible damage, above them there is the level of monitoring of industry centers based on Ukrenergo and Naftogaz, which, in turn, are already interacting directly with key cybersecurity stakeholders,” – Safarov explained the mechanism.
In his opinion, the creation of such industry centers will significantly enhance the cyber defense of energy facilities, which are the most vulnerable group of critical infrastructure.
“In order to simplify the work of colleagues from CERT-UA, to coordinate and make their intervention more effective precisely at critical moments, we are building this architecture,” the Deputy Minister noted.
As reported, since the beginning of the war, the number of cyber attacks on energy infrastructure facilities has almost doubled – over 200,000 cyber attacks were committed in 47 days of the war, while 900,000 of them were recorded in the entire 2021.
French President Emmanuel Macron said that at this stage he does not plan to visit Kyiv, as he does not believe that such a visit will bring concrete results.
“I think that in my case a trip to Kyiv would make sense only if it can bring real benefits to Ukrainians,” he explained his position to French journalists.
According to Macron, he is not going to visit the Ukrainian capital for the time being, because he does not want to “follow fashion’s lead.”
At the same time, the French president assured that he welcomes the recent visits to Kyiv by other European leaders, as “this shows European solidarity.”
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has downgraded its forecast for global trade growth in 2022 from 4.7% (in the October version) to 3.0%, noting that the Russian war against Ukraine threatens the fragile recovery of world trade, the WTO report says. published on Tuesday.
The outlook for the global economy deteriorated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “prompting WTO economists to reconsider their forecasts for world trade for the next two years,” the paper notes.
The organization now expects merchandise trade to grow by 3.0% in 2022, below its previous forecast of 4.7%, and by 3.4% in 2023. But these estimates are less accurate than usual because for the changing nature of the war, the authors of the review note.
“The most rapid economic impact of the crisis has been a sharp rise in commodity prices. Despite their small shares in global trade and manufacturing, Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers of essential commodities, including food, fuel and energy products and fertilizers, the supply of which is now Grain deliveries through the Black Sea ports have already been stopped, which could lead to serious consequences for the food security of poor countries,” the WTO said.
Nearly 43,800 refugees from Ukraine have been registered in Lithuania, 18,200 of them are minors, data from the Lithuanian Statistics Department released on Tuesday show.
Over the past 24 hours, 857 refugees have been registered in Lithuania, of which 334 are minors, including 87 children under six years of age. The weekly average daily rate of arrivals from Ukraine, according to the latest data, is 489 people.
Approximately a third of the Ukrainians who arrived were registered at the Vilnius registration center, about 6,000 – at the Kaunas center. Almost 4,900 refugees who arrived in Lithuania are children under the age of six, 13,400 are between the ages of 6 and 18. More than 1.9 thousand are people over the age of 65.
Most of the arrivals applied for a temporary residence permit for humanitarian reasons. Most of the arrivals are women and children.
Passenger traffic on the western section of the border on April 11 amounted to over 62 thousand, which is 8 thousand, or 11.4% less than the day before.
“Compared to the previous day, there is a decrease in the intensity of passenger traffic,” the State Border Service said on Tuesday.
The agency clarified that more than 35,000 left Ukraine against 39,000 a day earlier, and almost two-thirds of those who left came to Poland, which is in line with average values.
According to the State Border Service, the flow of people entering Ukraine on April 12 also decreased to over 27,000 from the maximum 30,000 recorded on the weekend since the beginning of the war. Including Ukrainian citizens, 24,000 entered on Monday against 27,000 on Sunday.
According to the data of the Polish border service on Twitter, on April 11, 24 thousand people entered the country from Ukraine, which is 16% less, and in the first 7 hours of Tuesday, the flow decreased by another 14%, to 5.1 thousand. In the direction of Ukraine on Monday 16.6 thousand people left against 19.4 thousand people the day before.
The State Border Service of Ukraine also reported that over the past day the number of registered vehicles with humanitarian cargo fell to 390 from 460 the day before.
According to UNHCR data, as of 13:00 on April 10, a total of 4.55 million people have left Ukraine since the beginning of the war, of which Poland received 2.62 million, Romania and Moldova – 771.32 thousand, Hungary – 424.37 thousand. , Russia – 404.42 thousand, Slovakia – 317.78 thousand, Belarus – 20.74 thousand.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to the Lithuanian parliamentarians, said that some countries of the European Union still, while the war is unfolding in Ukraine, cannot decide on the timing when they will limit the use of Russian energy resources.
“The European Union is discussing the sixth package of sanctions against Russia for a war not seen since the Second World War. And it is still unknown whether oil will be under sanctions. Even after seeing the massacres in Bucha and other cities. Even knowing about the deportation of people, even watching deliberate destruction of peaceful cities by Russian missiles and air bombs, some EU countries cannot decide when they will, at least in essence, limit the purchase of Russian energy resources,” Zelensky said.
According to him, hundreds of European companies and banks not only still have not refused to work on the Russian market, but also demonstrate frank disrespect in response to the demand to stop financing the Russian military machine through taxes.
“And all this is happening right now, when the blood is still fresh. What this shows is that if only the sixth sanctions package began to seriously discuss oil, it means that the world does not understand what kind of war Russia was preparing for. If there is still no clear certainty on Russian gas, therefore, there can be no certainty that Europe has a common will to stop Russian war crimes, to force Russia into peace.If there are big European companies and big European banks that, even in the midst of hostilities in Ukraine, do not consider it necessary exit the Russian market, this means that all other companies take it as a signal: wait a bit, and then you can work as usual, even if nothing, in essence, changes in the behavior of Russia,” the president added.
