U.S. President Trump ordered the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after months of complaints from allies outside the administration, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that she was undermining him abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani told the newspaper that Yovanovitch was biased against the U.S. president in private conversations and prevented Ukraine from conducting an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.
In addition, the newspaper reports that Giuliani handed over to the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a nine-page document dated March 28 containing a schedule of Biden’s business meetings in Ukraine.
The document also claimed that Yovanovitch was very close to the former vice president.
It is noted that although the U.S. Department of State presented Yovanovitch’s departure from Ukraine in May as planned, her tenure as ambassador was three months shorter than the usual three-year term.
Earlier, U.S. media reported that Trump tried in a telephone conversation on July 25 to convince Zelensky of the need to launch an investigation against Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.
An American intelligence officer complained in writing, and members of the U.S. Congress received the complaint for review. The complaint of intelligence officer statement prompted Democrats in the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment hearings against Trump.
In addition to U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch, democrats also requested State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland appear for depositions at the Congress.
On Thursday, Trump explicitly called on Ukraine and China to launch investigations into the activities of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his companies.
The Dutch low cost airline Transavia (part of Air France KLM Group) is considering operation in Ukraine, Frank Van ‘T Hof, the commercial director of Air France KLM for the CIS countries, has said at a meeting with reporters in Kyiv.
“Our central networking office is considering this possibility. But it all comes down to a very thorough calculation of this business plan,” he said.
According to him, it is important for the group to launch a product from which it will be able to earn income.
Currently, Air France KLM operates flights from Kyiv to Amsterdam on a daily basis, and also provides a number of destinations in Ukraine in code sharing with UIA.
As reported, Air France previously announced the transfer of Kyiv-Paris flights to a seasonal basis, as a result of which flights on this route will not be operated from October 27, 2019 to March 28, 2020.
Air France KLM has been the largest European alliance since 2004, whose core business is passenger and cargo air transportation, as well as aircraft maintenance.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko believes that Ukraine and Belarus may jointly apply for hosting the Olympic Games in the future.
“The President of Ukraine offers us to think together about whether we can even apply for hosting the Olympic Games. We can do it, two countries can,” he said, speaking at the Second Forum of Regions of Ukraine and Belarus in Zhytomyr on Friday.
Ukraine’s seaports, whose share in import deliveries of diesel fuel is rapidly growing amid the introduction of duties on Russian resources supplied by pipeline, will have to accept a record volume of diesel fuel in the amount of 150,000 tonnes in October, director of A-95 Consulting Group (Kyiv) Serhiy Kuyun said on Facebook.
According to him, to date, the record volume fixed in the autumn of 2015 was 130,000 tonnes.
Kuyun said that in September the share of seaports in the structure of import deliveries was 20%, whereas a year earlier it was 10%. The share of fuel supplies from Belarus is 53% (against 36% in September 2018), Russian deliveries by rail 6% (against 3%), Russian deliveries through Gomel 12% (against 9%), and Lithuania’s share some 9% (against 8%).
“After the tense first half of September, when the price of diesel fuel increased by more than 11% due to deficit, the market was balanced by the end of the month even with a slight surplus. It will come in handy in October, when supplies from Belarus are expected to fall due to the halt of Mozyr oil refinery,” the expert said.
The required amount of fuel, he said, will be covered by increasing supplies through seaports, oil refining by Ukrtatnafta, and railway deliveries from Russia.
Commenting on the market price situation in September, he noted that the cost of diesel fuel is not yet striving to decrease.
Ukraine in January-August 2019 sold industrial products (goods, services) for UAH 1.685 trillion, which is 4.7% more than in January-August 2018 (UAH 1.609 trillion), in particular abroad for UAH 457.496 billion, the State Statistics Service has said.
According to its data, in August 2019 compared with August 2018, the turnover of goods sold in mining and processing industries grew by 0.4%, and from July 2019 decreased by 5.1%. At the same time, sales in mining industry in August 2019 compared with August 2018 increased by 2.5% (compared to July 2019 decreased by 9.2%), in processing industry decreased by 0.1% (compared to July 2019 by 4%).
In the total volume of industrial products sales for the eight months of 2019, the largest share fell on processing industry (63.8%), the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning (18.1%), mining industry and quarrying (16.9%), and metallurgical production (16.8%).
As reported, in 2018 industrial products (goods, services) were sold for UAH 2.509 trillion, which is 16.5% more than in 2017.
Businesses are signaling problems with the timely budget reimbursement of value added tax (VAT), Andy Hunder, the President of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmChem), has stated.
“We began to receive signals from the companies about delays in VAT refunds,” Hunder said, addressing Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk.
He also emphasized the importance of transparent VAT refunds, as well as protecting the rights of investors in Ukraine.
