Data from all of the capital’s air quality monitoring points have been included in the “Kyiv Digital” application, said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
“I will note that Kyiv continues to strengthen control over the state of atmospheric air. After all, military actions and shelling caused fires in the suburbs, from which the air condition on some days was unsatisfactory,” Klitschko stressed.
According to him, five stationary complexes of European standard are already working in the capital, carefully examining the quality of the air on about 10 indicators. It is also planned to add to them the measurement of the radiation background.
Kyiv plans to install three more stationary points of observation in Desniansky, Holosiyivsky and Sviatoshynsky districts in 2022.
There are also more than 40 indicative air monitoring stations in the capital, supplementing the data from the main stations.
PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) has resumed production and begins shipping to foreign consumers thanks to cooperation with Ukrzaliznytsia and attention to the enterprise from the government of the country.
According to head of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia Oleksandr Kamyshin, the railway continues to work according to the schedule, and now ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is joining the work on schedule, which resumes work and launches the first furnace.
“Together with the railway team today at the plant we are meeting the first tonne of commercial pig iron. Let me remind you that three weeks ago, together with Minister of Infrastructure (Oleksandr) Kubrakov and First Deputy Prime Minister (Yulia) Svyrydenko, we were already in Kryvy Rih and we discussed with the management of the steel plant how the railway can help launch the plant. I am glad to be with the team of the steel plant at such a historic moment today. Let me remind you that the last time the Kryvy Rih iron and steel works was launched immediately after the Second World War,” the head of Ukrzaliznytsia wrote.
At the same time, he noted that the workers of the metallurgical plant receive work, “and, therefore, wages, the economy – taxes, and the railway – the same tonne of cargo that we have always fought for.”
In turn, General Director of ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih Mauro Longobardo, in an interview with the Kryvy Rih television company, noted that after the suspension of the enterprise’s activities due to hostilities, work in the mining sector continued at 30% of normal capacity. At the same time, work was suspended in the underground mine of the plant due to fear of a sudden power outage.
Gas reserves in underground storage facilities at the end of the heating season (HZP) 2021/2022 amount to 9 billion cubic meters. m, coal in warehouses – 1 million tons, said the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal.
“We have successfully completed the heating season. 9 billion cubic meters of gas in storage, 1 million tons of coal in warehouses. We will begin preparations for the next heating season,” the prime minister said in a televised address on Tuesday evening.
As reported, at the end of the 2020/2021 AWP, as of April 1, there were 0.491 million tons of coal in the warehouses of the TPP Group, while gas reserves amounted to almost 16 billion cubic meters.
1 million people have already registered as new internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of the Russian invasion on February 24, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. “We support internally displaced persons. 1 million people have already officially registered,” Shmyhal said in his address on Tuesday evening. The Prime Minister also noted that in the front-line cities, the authorities continue to distribute free food packages.
“The state buys products mainly from Ukrainian manufacturers in order to load them with orders. For most items, they purchased from 30 to 80% of everything they need,” he said. Shmygal also said that more than 5,000 employers have already applied for clarifications on receiving compensation for the employment of displaced persons. According to the Ministry of Social Policy, as of April 9, about 900,000 IDPs were officially registered in Ukraine. As the UN has previously noted, the Russian-led war against Ukraine has triggered one of the fastest-growing refugee and IDP emergencies on record: the organization predicts the number of IDPs in Ukraine has reached 7.1 million, up from 854,000 before the start of the war, and The number of refugees abroad could rise to 4 million from 53,000.
According to the UN map, there are about 2.9 million IDPs in western Ukraine, 1.4 million in the central regions on the right bank of the Dnieper, 1.3 million to the northeast of Kyiv, south near Kiev and north of Odessa and Nikolaev – 357 thousand each and on the left bank of the Dnieper in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – 857 thousand.
On Tuesday, the government of Ukraine allocated an additional UAH 2.3 billion to the Affordable Loans 5-7-9 program, under which the Cabinet of Ministers compensates the interest rate, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.
“We have also reformatted this program. Now every entrepreneur can get a loan at 0% in the amount of up to UAH 60 million. The state will pay the interest to the bank,” he said in his address on Tuesday evening.
Shmygal stressed that the restart and resumption of business is a necessary condition for the sustainability of the economy.
The prime minister also noted that the government is providing assistance to farmers, and the sowing campaign has already begun in all regions, except for Luhansk.
“We have provided them (agrarians) with concessional financing for UAH 3.5 billion. At today’s meeting of the government, they decided to simplify the registration of agricultural machinery as much as possible. We are doing this so that sowing work in the field does not stop anywhere,” Shmyhal said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance announced that within the framework of the program “Affordable loans 5-7-9” from February 21 to April 11, 1,391 loans were issued for a total of UAH 3.95 billion.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal hopes that Ukraine will receive the status of a candidate for membership in the European Union no later than June 2022.
“We met with the leadership of the European Union in Kyiv. Received a questionnaire that must be completed in order to obtain candidate status for EU membership. We started working on it. We expect that Ukraine will be able to receive such a status no later than June of this year,” Shmygal said in his address on Tuesday evening.
