Ukraine in terms of the total area of crops in the current season is lagging behind compared to last year’s figures, the lag depending on the crop is from 20% to 30%, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Mykola Solsky said at a briefing at the Ukrainian Media Center on Monday.
“The quality of crops is significantly worse compared to previous years for obvious reasons. This is already very bad for world markets and even worse in the medium or long term,” he added.
According to the minister, in addition to the military invasion of the Russian Federation, the course of the sowing season is negatively affected by a number of factors, primarily logistical ones.
“The sowing campaign in Ukraine is quite active. There are understandable difficulties, primarily with logistics. Farmers and agricultural enterprises spend less money on basic things – seeds, herbicides. They save as much as possible, given the interruptions in diesel. Obviously, there are losses in time, let’s call it that, because the curfew, the movement of equipment, some equipment went to the front, there are also fewer people left,” Solsky specified.
According to him, there are difficulties with the storage of agricultural products and fuel. The combination of these factors leads to both a decrease in the volume of agricultural products produced and a deterioration in its quality.
As reported, during the sowing season-2022, by May 5, Ukraine sowed 7.1 million hectares of land with the main agricultural crops, which is 49.3% of the 14.4 million hectares planned for the current season. During the week of April 28 – May 5, 2.71 million hectares were sown.
According to the data published on its website, as of May 5, the area under sunflower crops is 2.4 million hectares (+1.03 million hectares per week), corn – 1.98 million hectares (sowing started this week), spring barley – 853.8 thousand hectares (sowing completed), spring wheat – 186.1 thousand hectares (+10.3 thousand hectares), oats – 153.5 thousand hectares (+9.5 thousand hectares), peas – 116.3 thousand ha (+3.3 thousand ha).
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said on April 20 that Ukraine will sow approximately 14.2 million hectares of agricultural land this season, which is 80% of last year’s figure of 16.9 million hectares.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the government should speed up the transportation of fuel from European ports to Ukrainian consumers.
“The key task for government members is to speed up the transportation of fuel from European ports to our consumers. The volume of such transportation should increase daily,” Zelensky said in a traditional video message on Saturday.
He said that at present, everything is being done to ensure that the state fulfills all social obligations, despite the budget deficit due to the destruction of the Ukrainian economy by the Russian army.
At a meeting with members of the government on Saturday, Zelensky recalled that the issue of fuel shortage was raised last week. “At the beginning of last week, we agreed that we would resolve the issue this week. The week is ending,” Zelensky said.
In turn, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko called the main problem – the logistics of receiving fuel for Ukraine in Eastern European ports.
“If you look at imports, over the past five days we have been importing exactly the same amount, even a little more, than we consume. Europe was simply not ready: not even in terms of resources, but in terms of logistics. We have a bottleneck – these are ports, European ports,” she said.
“We have Gdansk, Gdynia, Swinoujscie, Constanta, Burgas – there is a traffic jam. We asked [Foreign Minister] Dmytro Kuleba to get involved already at the international level – to ask for a green corridor for Ukraine in these ports,” Svyrydenko added.
Ukrainian athletes won thirteen medals on the seventh day of the Deaflympic Games in Caxias do Sul (Brazil), the Ministry of Youth and Sports reported.
According to the press service of the ministry, at the XXIV Summer Deaflympics, the national deaflympics team of Ukraine won 13 awards on the seventh day – 8 gold, 1 silver and 4 bronze.
In particular, the gold medals for Ukraine were won by: Elisaveta Topchanyuk (cycling, criterium), Nazar Levitsky, Anna Fedoseyeva (orienteering, mixed relay), Oleksiy Lazebnik, Inna Afonchenko (ball shooting, 10 m air pistol, mixed), Natalka Ursulenko ( shot put), Maxim Ovcharenko, Roksolana Budnik (table tennis, mixed team), Irina Tereshchenko (swimming, 100 m breaststroke), Dmitry Rudenko, Sergey Drach, Solomiya Kuprich, Kristina Kinyaikina (athletics, mixed relay 4×40) and swimmers Artem Karnysh , Ivan Zinenko, Maxim Dudnik, Vladislav Adamovich in the 4x200m free style relay.
Athlete Yekaterina Potapenko won silver in the heptathlon.
Bronze was won by Nikolay Nosenko (athletics, 100m), Vladislav Kremlyakov (swimming, 50m backstroke), Maria Levanovich (taekwondo, up to 67 kg) and Gennady Zakladnoy and Yulia Khodko in table tennis among mixed teams.
In general, the national Deaflympic team of Ukraine won 77 medals: 39 gold, 16 silver and 22 bronze, and continues to occupy a leading position at the Summer Deaflympiad.
Main trade partners of Ukraine in % from total volume (import from other countries to Ukraine) in 2021
SSC of Ukraine
On Monday, May 9, US President Joseph Biden intends to sign law S. 3522 “Lend-Lease Act in Defense of Democracy in Ukraine of 2022,” according to Biden’s public schedule for Monday.
As noted, the signing will take place at 14.45 (21.45 Kyiv time).
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, believes that the EU could withdraw Russian reserves stored in Europe and send them to the restoration of Ukraine.
“I would strongly advocate for it, as it is completely logical,” he said in an interview published in The Financial Times on Monday.
“The European Commission has said that restoring Ukraine could cost hundreds of billions of euros, and European capitals could consider seizing Russian assets frozen abroad to help pay for Ukraine’s rebuilding (…)”, the FT quoted the words as saying. Borrell.
At the same time, Borrell drew an analogy with Afghanistan – the United States took control of billions of dollars of assets belonging to the Central Bank of Afghanistan in order to possibly use them in part to compensate victims of terrorism, as well as to provide humanitarian assistance to the country.
“We have money in our pockets, and someone has to explain to me why it’s good to do this with Afghan money, but not with Russian money,” Borrell said.
“EU representatives have considered whether it is possible in any way to direct Russia’s reserves to the reconstruction of Ukraine, but Brussels has not moved forward with any political proposals on this topic,” the publication notes.
The FT recalls that “shortly after the start of the conflict, the EU and its allies froze hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign assets of the Central Bank of Russia.”
BORRELL, EU, FINANCIAL TIMES, REBUILD UKRAINE, RUSSIAN FUNDS
