Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu paid a visit to Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said.
“Welcomed my Turkish counterpart and friend Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ukraine. Turkey’s solidarity remains unwavering. Grateful for political and humanitarian support, as well as Turkey’s ongoing diplomatic efforts to put an end to Russia’s devastating war against Ukraine,” Kuleba said on Twitter on Thursday.
Since February 24, 1.9 million people have left Ukraine for Poland, the Polish Border Guard Service has said.
“Since February 24, some 1.95 million people have arrived from Ukraine to Poland. Yesterday, March 16, border guards registered 60,000 people, a decrease of 11%,” the border guard said in a statement on Thursday.
Pumping capacity via the Ukrainian gas-transit corridor has remained at yesterday’s level for European consumers.
“Gazprom is supplying Russian gas for transit via Ukraine as usual as per the bookings of European consumers at 94.6 million cubic meters on March 17,” Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters.
According to the data of the Gas Transmission System (GTS) Operator of Ukraine, the nomination for March 17 is 95 million cubic meters, and bookings for March 16 totaled 94.5 million cubic meters.
The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, which pumps gas through Belarus and Poland to Germany, switched to reverse mode on Tuesday and will continue pumping gas from Germany to Poland on Wednesday. Gazprom did not book any capacity along the Polish section of the pipeline either for the regular session or for the additional night session. Gas supplies from Germany to Poland, meaning off-take of additional volumes from the main European hubs, are another component of the current high prices in the EU.
Electricity generation from renewable sources is declining once again this week. The contribution of wind generation to the energy balance of Europe averaged 17% for the week of March 7 to 13; on Monday, and it has averaged 12% over the three days of this week, according to data from the WindEurope association. The weather forecast for the next few days should be calm.
Real Madrid Football Club will donate EUR1 million as part of the Everyone with Ukraine campaign, which was launched by the Real Madrid Foundation on March 5 to help meet the humanitarian needs of displaced people in Ukraine, together with other international non-governmental organizations.
The Spanish club said on Wednesday the aid will be sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross and UNHCR, as well as to the fund’s partner in Ukraine, the public organization Epicentr for Children for children and to support the reception of refugees in Spain.
Among the places in Ukraine where this aid will go, Real named Chernivtsi, Kryvy Rih and more than ten Salesian missions in Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr regions and Odesa.
Real Madrid recalled that it has been working with Epicentr for Children since 2018 in seven social sports schools in the cities of Ternopil, Irpin, Khmelnytsky and Kyiv, and now this program covers 800 children.
“The Real Madrid Foundation’s “Everyone with Ukraine” campaign will continue as long as necessary to provide a direct donation channel that helps provide for the needs of the displaced population both in Ukraine and in the bordering countries as well as welcoming refugees in Spain,” the report says.
The United Nations Refugee Agency reported that since February 24, more than 3 million people have been forced to leave the country and at least 2 million more have become internally displaced persons within the country. The agency indicated that in just over two weeks, companies, foundations and philanthropists contributed more than $200 million to the emergency response in Ukraine, out of the $510 million requested for primary emergency care.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on virtual assets, which refers this market to the regulation of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission and the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). According to the Telegram channel of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, with the start of this law, the following changes will be introduced in Ukraine:
– foreign and Ukrainian crypto exchanges will work legally;
– banks will open accounts for crypto companies;
– Ukrainians will be able to protect their savings in virtual assets;
– the state will guarantee judicial protection of rights to virtual assets.
In addition, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission will formulate and implement a policy in the field of virtual assets; determine the procedure for the turnover of virtual assets; issue authorizations to VA service providers; exercise supervision and financial monitoring in this area.
According to the Ministry of Digital Development, this is another important step towards the de-shadowing of the crypto sector and the launch of a legal market for virtual assets in Ukraine. “Since the beginning of the war, crypto assets have become a powerful tool for attracting additional funding in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During the three weeks of the war, the Crypto Fund of Ukraine raised more than $54 million in crypto assets. Today, the president has signed the law on virtual assets. We are launching a legal market for virtual assets in Ukraine and bringing the crypto sector out of the shadows,” Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel.
As of Wednesday, 26 MPs are abroad, about ten of them are members of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the rest are members of the Opposition Platform – For Life faction, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk has said.
“As of this morning, according to the information I have, 26 MPs are abroad. But I must emphasize that about ten of them are the women deputies who were sent by me to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in order for them to defend the decision that PACE made yesterday regarding the exclusion of Russia from the Assembly,” the speaker said on the air of the 1+1 TV channel.
At the same time, he stressed that members of the Opposition Platform – For Life faction are now mostly not on working trips abroad.
“The reasons for their departure are not known. I didn’t send them on a working trip. But they are there. As for the future, they should be given political responsibility by the Ukrainian people in the next elections. But I think that it will not be limited to this either, because those who committed crimes against the Ukrainian people, who were collaborators, committed high treason, in addition to political responsibility, they will definitely incur criminal liability,” Stefanchuk specified.
