The IMK agricultural holding will not launch any new investment projects in 2026, but will allocate approximately $25 million to equipment upgrades, according to Alex Lissitsa, advisor to the holding’s board of directors.
“We will invest up to $25 million next year, primarily in equipment, but also in our other projects,” he said at the Forbes Agro 2025 conference in Kyiv on Friday.
IMK is an integrated group of companies operating in the Sumy, Poltava, and Chernihiv regions (northern and central Ukraine) in the crop production, elevators, and warehouses segments. Its land bank covers 116,000 hectares, and its storage capacity is 554,000 tons for the 2024 harvest of 864,000 tons.
IMK ended 2024 with a net profit of $54.54 million, compared to a net loss of $21.03 million in 2023. Revenue grew by 52% to $211.29 million, gross profit quadrupled to $109.10 million, and normalized EBITDA increased 25-fold to $86.11 million.
The Ganges River is experiencing its worst crisis in 1,300 years, which could have far-reaching socio-economic consequences and exacerbate relations between India and Pakistan over the issue of water resource distribution, Phys.org writes, citing a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar and the University of Arizona have found that the current drying of the Ganges from 1991 to 2020 is 76% more severe than the previous worst drought in the 16th century. The river has become drier overall, with droughts occurring more frequently and lasting longer.
The main reason is anthropogenic impact, in particular the warming of the Indian Ocean and atmospheric pollution from industrial and transport aerosols, which weaken the summer monsoon.
To reconstruct the flow over 1,300 years (700–2012 AD), scientists used tree ring data from the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas, combining it with modern observations and verifying it against documented droughts and famines.
The Ganges is a key source of drinking water, agriculture, and industry for more than 600 million people in India. The deepening water crisis could directly affect relations between India and Pakistan, as the countries already have long-standing disputes over the distribution of river flows under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.
Pakistan has repeatedly warned about threats to its water supply due to Indian hydropower projects. The worsening shortage of the Ganges and related changes in other river basins could create new sources of tension between the countries.
The authors of the study call for
improved climate modeling to account for the regional impact of human activity,
the development of new adaptive water management strategies to avoid large-scale shortages.
The Ganges River has historically played not only an economic but also a cultural and religious role in South Asia. At the same time, access to water resources in the region is already the subject of geopolitical competition. Increased climate risks could make this issue another factor in the confrontation between India and Pakistan.
The average cost of renting a one-room apartment in Kyiv was €615, according to the ranking of rental prices for housing in Europe.
The ten most expensive cities included Monaco (€6,500), London (€2,797), Zurich (€2,570), Reykjavik (€2,160), and Dublin (€1,997). These megacities remain inaccessible to most tenants, and the cost of rent is comparable to the monthly income of the average resident.
The most affordable housing among European capitals is offered by Skopje (€250) and Sarajevo (€271). In these cities, the rental market remains relatively stable and is determined by local incomes.
Kyiv is among the countries with relatively low rental costs — €615. This is lower than in Belgrade (€750), Warsaw (€880), and Prague (€922), but higher than in Tallinn (€600), Zagreb (€570), or Sofia (€550). Experts note that with the continuing military risk and population outflow, demand for rentals remains limited, which is holding back price growth.
The study is based on data from major European real estate portals and is updated every six months. The methodology takes into account the median cost of renting apartments in the center and on the outskirts of cities. The rating is widely used by investors and analysts to assess the investment attractiveness of housing markets and the level of rental affordability for the population.
The online electronics and home appliances store Rozetka, in partnership with Unex Bank and the Mastercard payment system, has issued its own credit card with a limit of UAH 200,000.
According to the information on the company’s website, the card is available to Ukrainian citizens over the age of 18. After registering on the platform’s website, users will have access to additional exclusive low prices on Rozetka products, even on promotional items, bonuses, discounts, a credit limit of up to UAH 200,000, the ability to use the limit for purchases on Rozetka, payment in installments, and regular transactions.
It is noted that the grace period is available for up to 62 days (0.0001%), outside the grace period the rate will be 4.334% per month. The real annual interest rate is 54.77%.
Installment plans are available for up to 24 months, and you can also fully control your expenses and payments in the Rozetka app.
There is no card service fee, but Unex Bank will open a separate account to create it.
The Rozetka online store for electronics and household appliances was founded in 2005 in Kyiv by Vladislav and Irina Chechotkin, and later Horizon Capital became a co-owner of the company. Today, the company has transformed into a multi-category online marketplace, but it is also developing a network of its own stores. As of August 1, 2025, the chain has 549 stores in 166 cities.
The volume of freight transportation in January-August 2025 amounted to 208.9 million tons, which is 11.3% less than in the same period of 2024, while in January-July the decline was 12.6%, according to the State Statistics Service (Derzhstat) on its website.
According to its data, rail transport remains the leader in terms of freight volume, with 106.9 million tons, which is 9.4% less than in the same period last year.
Rail freight turnover for the reporting period amounted to 67.70 billion tonne*km, which is 11.8% less than for the same period in 2024.
According to the State Statistics Service, road transport carried 77.4 million tons of cargo in the first eight months of this year, which is 9.3% less than in the first eight months of 2024.
Cargo transportation by water transport in January-August 2025 amounted to only 0.6 million tons, or 53.3% of the volume in January-August 2024.
Data on cargo transportation by pipeline and rail transport during martial law are not disclosed.
As reported, freight traffic in 2024 increased by 7.8%, and freight turnover by 13%, to 184.58 billion tons/km.
At the beginning of this year, the decline in freight transportation in Ukraine accelerated and reached 18.5% in the first four months, including a 21.3% decline in rail transportation, but since then, the decline has been slowing down every month.
One of Ukraine’s largest grain market operators, Nibulon, has reduced its staff threefold, retained four areas of operation, focused on the introduction of new digital services and technologies, and plans to return to its pre-war share of 10% of Ukraine’s grain exports by increasing exports this year to 4 million tons from 2.5 million tons last year, said the company’s owner and CEO Andriy Vadatursky.
“Before the war, the company employed 6,000 people. When I was waiting (for the core team to move from Mykolaiv to Kyiv – IF-U), there were 4,000 employees. Now there are a little less than 2,000. This is the path to optimization and automation of numbers. When people ask, ‘What has changed for you?’, I answer that everything has changed – the entire business model has changed,” he said at the Forbes Agro 2025 conference in Kyiv on Friday.
Vadatursky noted that Nibulon currently has four main business areas: agricultural production, logistics, trading, and digitalization.
According to him, Nibulon is developing agricultural production on slightly more than 50,000 hectares, while before the war, the agricultural holding operated on 82,000 hectares. Its lost agricultural land is located in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. In addition, before the war, the grain trader owned 28 elevators, 5 of which have been lost and 13 blocked. Nibulon’s logistics company currently operates 167 motor vehicles and 200 grain cars.
According to the company’s owner, the agricultural holding currently grows approximately 300,000 tons of grain on its own. However, in 2024, Nibulon was able to export 2.5 million tons of grain, and in 2025, it plans to supply up to 4 million tons to foreign markets.
“It is no secret that Nibulon entered the war with $530 million in loans. Currently, we have confirmed losses of $440 million, which, in addition to the loss of land and elevators, include the loss of about 140,000 tons of grain,” Vadatursky said, adding that in three years of war, the agricultural holding was able to earn $250 million and repay $160 million in debts to banks.
He assured that Nibulon intends to continue servicing its loans in 2025, despite the fact that 68% of its assets are currently not operational.
Vadatursky explained that during the war, Nibulon will focus on the efficiency of its businesses, their expansion, and vertical integration. At the same time, the main criteria will be efficiency and “streamlining by removing all inefficient components.” In addition, the grain trader will focus on the introduction of new technologies, digitalization, and artificial intelligence.
“We are targeting approximately $60-80 million in EBITDA to be able to repay all loans. To this end, we are doing everything we can to increase the amount of grain that passes through our system. And we have the ambition to return to our pre-war share of exports, which was about 10-12% of Ukraine’s total grain exports, by providing more competitive services than before the war and earning money through the introduction of technologies and increased efficiency,” the owner of the agricultural holding concluded.
Before the war, Nibulon cultivated 82,000 hectares of land in 12 regions of Ukraine and exported agricultural products to more than 70 countries around the world. In 2021, the grain trader exported a record 5.64 million tons of agricultural products and supplied record volumes to foreign markets in August (0.7 million tons), in the fourth quarter (1.88 million tons), and in the second half of the year (3.71 million tons).
After the war began, the company was forced to move its headquarters from Mykolaiv to Kyiv.
