The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) calls on the Federal Government and the German Democratic Parties to immediately impose a moratorium on Nord Stream 2.
“The Russian natural gas pipeline, intended to bypass eastern Europe and directly connect in Germany, is scheduled to be completed this summer. It has faced significant European and international condemnation for being a political weapon of the Kremlin intended to use energy supply to control Ukraine and other Eastern European countries,” the UWC’s press service reported.
According to the UWC, a moratorium should be used to: clarify the strategic implications of Nord Stream 2 – particularly with respect to the security of Ukraine and of the EU’s eastern member states; undertake a detailed life cycle assessment of the project and have its climate impacts examined by an independent body; push forward with a common European energy policy; resolve the transatlantic differences relating to Nord Stream 2; and discuss principal issues of controversy between the EU and the Kremlin and reassess Nord Stream 2 in that light of this discussion.
The UWC is emphasizing that Nord Stream 2: undermines European cohesion and transatlantic relations; conflicts with the new European and German climate goals; threatens the already precarious security of Ukraine; and runs counter to the aim of a common EU external energy policy.
“A moratorium for Nord Stream 2 represents a chance to arrive at a common European position. It would deliver a clear message to Russia’s leadership that there are consequences for continuing violations of international law and for undermining the rules-based European order,” UWC President Paul Grod said.
“UWC calls on all Ukrainian and Eastern European communities together with all friends of Ukraine to join the appeal and urge their respective governments to support the moratorium on Nord Stream 2,” the Congress said.
JSC Ukrzaliznytsia is launching a Kiev-Vienna train since June, which will pass through the territory of Ukraine, Austria and Hungary, the Ukrzaliznytsia’s press service reported on Sunday.
The restoration of international railway traffic became possible with the assistance of the railway authorities of Austria and Hungary thanks to the stabilization of the situation with the coronavirus pandemic.
“The first train from Kiev to Vienna will start on June 1, so Ukrzaliznytsia passengers have a great opportunity to start their summer with a visit to Austria. In the future, the train will run daily according to the following schedule: it will depart from the Central Kiev Station at 02:07 pm, will pass through Budapest (arrival at 8:20 am) and arrive in Vienna at 11:21 am the next day. In the opposite direction (from June 2) the train will depart at 4:42 pm and arrive in Kiev at 5:22 pm the next day,” Ukrzaliznytsia said.
Tickets for the Kiev – Vienna train can be purchased at the international ticket offices of the stations.
“Passengers can find out up-to-date information on the rules for the entry of Ukrainian citizens into the territory of Austria and Hungary, as well as citizens of these countries in Ukraine, through the official sources of the embassies of Ukraine in Austria and Hungary and the embassies of these countries in Ukraine,” Ukrzaliznytsia said.
Ukraine will revise the indicators of the “green zone” in accordance with the updated EU indicators, said Minister of Health Viktor Liashko.
“We will change the indicators to reflect the indicators that are in effect in the EU. If we reach the indicators that are accepted in the EU and pass into the green zone, this will indicate that we will be able to visit EU countries even without vaccination passports. That is what we are striving for,” he told reporters on Saturday.
Belarus is ready to resume free trade with Ukraine if the latter reviews its measures on Belarusian goods, Belarusian First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Guryanov said.
“We’re ready to fully scrap all our decisions. We’re ready to resume free trade in full. But not before Ukraine has reviewed the measures taken in regard to Belarusian products, whose de facto aim was simply to limit competition from Belarusian manufacturers,” Guryanov said, commenting on a Belarusian government decision to license the import of certain types of goods in order to restrict trade with Ukraine.
His commentary was published on the ministry’s website on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Deputy Economic Minister and Trade Representative Taras Kachka said that Belarus was about to introduce an individual licensing regime on the import of a number of Ukrainian goods.
“There is information that Belarus has introduced individual licensing of the import of some Ukrainian goods: confectionary products, chocolate, juices, beer, chip and fiber boards, wallpaper, toilet paper and packaging, bricks, ceramic tiles, glass ampoules, agricultural equipment for sowing, washing machines, and furniture. The decision was approved by Decree 292 issued by of the Council of Ministers of Belarus on May 26,” Kachka said on Facebook. The decision will take effect ten months after publication and will remain in effect for six months, he said.
“Such actions are unfounded and discriminatory. Individual licensing means manual management of the import of Ukrainian products into Belarus. The government is holding consultations with manufacturers on dealing with the negative consequences of the discriminatory actions taken by the Belarusian government,” Kachka said.
For his part, Guryanov explained that the Council of Ministers decision of May 26, 2021, to license the import of certain types of goods was due to Ukraine having “recently systematically violated the free trade regime spelt out in the CIS free trade zone law.
“We have all agreed a long time ago that a free trade zone involves free movement of goods. The agreement does not involve imposing any tariff restrictions on members’ products in any form or stipulation. Last December Ukraine stunned Belarus by deciding to impose a de facto duty on certain types of Belarusian metal products under a pretext of supposedly unfriendly and discriminatory steps by the Republic of Belarus,” he recalled.
In May Ukraine’s inter-agency commission for international trade imposed further duties on Belarusian wheel products, and that despite “the Republic of Belarus having supplied, quite efficiently, passenger equipment to various towns across Ukraine by offering flexible financing tools, good prices, good technology. On the one hand, we were puzzled; on the other, this was yet another step which we think is wrong from the standpoint of free trade,” he said.
Belarus has long been analyzing all of Ukraine measures imposed on Belarus, he said. “I can state that, aside from those two examples I mentioned, Ukraine currently has eight anti-dumping and special protective measures in regard to Belarus. They involve anti-dumping duties on matches, starch, construction material, cement, incandescent bulbs, i.e. a whole list of products which falls under restrictions as Belarusian export to Ukraine,” he said.
Belarus repeatedly offered Ukraine (including at the level of the prime minister as a co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission and at the level of the foreign trade regulator, which in Belarus is the Foreign Ministry) holding consultations, using mechanisms to remove barriers, clarifying the sides’ positions, Guryanov said.
“Never once did Ukraine show a desire to respond to our requests and only in isolated cases, already after the decisions were made regarding restrictive measures against Belarus, we were simply told that at some point the Republic of Belarus’ long-time decisions started to be seen as unfriendly and discriminatory and for that reason it became necessary to restrict our supplies to Ukraine,” he said.
Belarus took measures, which effectively limit imports from Ukraine through additional controls, and then only temporarily, as per the international trade rules that are in active use in many countries, he said.
“We are ready for talks any moment. We once worked with Ukraine quite actively to remove barriers to mutual trade. For some reason, now these barriers began to re-appear, not at our initiative,” he said.
During the bilateral consultations “Ukraine hinted that what it saw as unfriendly and discriminatory measures on Belarus’ part were, for some reason, certain decisions made by the Eurasian Economic Union, which is now the responsibility of five countries, not just Belarus,” the diplomat said.
“Yet the counter- or some unfriendly restrictive measures needed to be taken exclusively against Belarus. For the simple reason that we are still not a member of the World Trade Organization. Which apparently means that it is okay to punish us in breach of free trade principles, in breach of international agreements which create conditions for normal competition, for normal export-import operations. So, once again: this is nothing to do with the current souring of our relations, aviation issues, and so on. This is down to the trade negotiations, pure and simple, which were supposed to lead us to remove the barriers, as I exhorted our Ukrainian colleagues to do,” the first deputy minister said.
Twenty state-owned enterprises of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry are to be liquidated and fifteen others are to be reorganized based on the results of 2020-2021, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ihor Khalimon said.
“Over the course of 2020-2021, 20 state enterprises should be liquidated, 15 reorganized, and three prepared for privatization (the 209th Operations Officer’s Directorate, the 417th Operations Officer’s Directorate, and the Druzhbivsky Quarry of Nonmetallic Minerals Kvarts),” Khalimon said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
In line with a list of state-owned assets endorsed by the Defense Ministry order of September 11, 2020, which envisions the optimization of the state enterprise management system, 42 of the 111 Defense Ministry enterprises (40 related to the ministry’s Main Directorate and the other two to its Main Intelligence Directorate) will remain operating, Khalimon said.
“We’re talking about optimizing the system of management of state enterprises by determining a list of economic assets to be engaged in meeting the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” he said.
The Defense Ministry currently manages 109 economic entities, which generated losses of over UAH 53,000 in 2019, Khalimon said.
“Based on the results of economic activities in 2020, the enterprises transferred UAH 269.235 million to the Ukrainian state budget, which is 12% more than in the previous period, the enterprises’ aggregate revenue grew by 23% to UAH 1.069 billion, and the net sales revenue grew by 19.6% to UAH 984.7 million,” Khalimon said.
According to him, after the reorganization of the state-run enterprise Ivano-Frankivsk Military Timber Industrial Complex and the state-run enterprise Lviv Military Forestry Complex, 11 newly established forestry enterprises, based on the results of financial statements, worked profitably, with no wage arrears.
Specialists from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Economy, the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection and the Government Office for Coordination on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration are working on a draft resolution gradually reducing the content of phosphates and phosphorus compounds in household and industrial detergents.
According to a press release of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, the Cabinet of Ministers is developing a draft resolution on amendments to the technical regulations for detergents together with the above agencies.
“Many manufacturers of detergents in other countries have already abandoned the use of phosphates, which can negatively affect human health and the environment, and switched to safer alternatives. The State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection supports making of this important decision in Ukraine,” Head of the authority Vladyslava Mahaletska said.
The resolution plans to amend the Technical Regulations for Detergents, as well as update the list of national standards for test methods for detergents and amend a number of other documents.
A draft action plan on state supervision and state control of products for compliance of detergents with the requirements of technical regulations will also be submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration.
