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.
Israeli doctors have set up a field hospital in Lviv region to help Ukrainians, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.
“Grateful to the State of Israel for setting up the ShiningStar field hospital in Lviv region. I thank its team of Israeli physicians and paramedics for their important humanitarian mission and tireless work to help Ukrainian men, women, and children at this difficult time,” Kuleba wrote on Friday.
TOP 20 countries of Ukraine’s foreign trade in 2021 (thousand USd)
Calculated by Open4Business
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.
Almost 43,000 people crossed the state border from Ukraine to the EU and Moldova on March 23, while the day before there were more than 43,000, the State Border Guard Service said on Thursday. “The data of the last few days indicate that the passenger flow on the western section of the border remains stable,” the agency reported.
The State Border Guard Service said that about two-thirds of those who left went to Poland, which corresponds to the average values.
According to it, the flow of people entering Ukraine on March 24 remained the same as the day before – more than 19,000, including almost 16,000 citizens of Ukraine. “The vast majority are men who are ready to defend the country. Since the beginning of the open armed aggression, more than 400,000 of our compatriots returned to Ukraine,” the State Border Guard Service said.
It reports that all checkpoints on the western border (except “Dzvinkove”) operate around the clock.
The State Border Guard Service also reported that over the past day the number of registered vehicles with humanitarian cargo exceeded 670, while in previous two days they were registered 750-760.
According to the UNHCR, as of 13:00 on March 23, a total of 3.67 million people left Ukraine since the beginning of the war, of which Poland received 2.17 million, Romania and Moldova – 633,06, Hungary – 330,880, Slovakia – 260,240, Russia – 271,250, Belarus – 5,570.
Passenger traffic across the western border of Ukraine, thousands
Date From Ukraine Including to Poland Into Ukraine Including Ukrainians Number of vehicles
24.3 43 28 19 16 13
23.3 43 28 19 16 13
22.3 45 30 18 15 12
21.3 42 29 17 14 11
20.3 47 30 20 17 14
19.3 50 45 21 17 14
18.3 50 32 19 15 13
17.3 55 33 18 15 14
16.3 69 47 17 14 14
15.3 75 52 16 13 13
14.3 71 48 15 13 13
13.3 62 41 17 14 15
12.3 77 51 19 14 15
11.3 75 49 18 15 14
Data: State Border Guard Service
