At the 17th meeting of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine (Ramstein), Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles reported on the recent shipment of aid to Ukraine, including medicines and surgical instruments.
According to the press service of the Ministry of Defense, Robles informed about the recent shipment of 15 pallets of medicines and surgical instruments to Ukraine, which will ensure the operation of the field hospital transferred by Spain a few months ago.
“The minister also reported on the cooperation of Spanish industry in supplying equipment and ammunition to Ukraine and spoke in detail about the program to support the reception of families of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action in military recreation centers on the Spanish coast,” the statement said.
Robles noted good progress in the training of the Ukrainian military in Spain, where more than 3,000 servicemen have been trained to date. She added that it is planned to teach training courses on the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law for representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) has put German building materials manufacturer Knauf on the list of international war sponsors due to its continued business activities in the Russian Federation. “Only for 2022, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of building materials Knauf will pay about $117 million to the budget of the terrorist country rf. In addition, the German company actively promotes mobilization in russia, sending its employees to the war against Ukraine,” – stated in the message NAPC.
According to its data, Knauf is the largest German investor in the construction sector of the Russian Federation – there the company is represented by a dozen subsidiaries, and also has 20 factories, six training and 29 resource centers in the system of secondary vocational education. In addition, on the territory of one of the production facilities Knauf in Tatarstan organized the Russian production of UAV Shahed-136, the report notes.
As noted by the NAPC, according to the German media, the Russian managers of the Knauf plant in Krasnogorsk near Moscow coordinated with the authorities lists of mobilization.
In addition, the management of Knauf is closely connected by diplomatic relations with representatives of the political regime of the Russian Federation, points out the NAPC. Thus, the co-owner of the company Nikolaus Wilhelm Knauf 23 years until March 2022 had the status of Honorary Consul of the Russian Federation with representation in Nuremberg. Despite the fact that Knauf left this post after the start of the full-scale invasion, the company stated its intention to continue working in the Russian Federation.
Knauf also takes part in construction exhibitions in RF, and has organized its own Russian-made construction technology festival.
“Specialists from Knauf continue to build cities to the aggressor country. This contrasts particularly cynically with the thousands of destroyed residential houses in Ukraine by the aggressor’s army, which is financed, among other things, from Knauf’s taxes,” the NAPC notes.
Knauf, NAPC, National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption
The German and EU governments have financed the construction of six hospitals in Ukraine under the EU4ResilientRegions project, a Special Support Program for Ukraine co-financed by the European Union and the German government.
According to a press release from GIZ Ukraine, which is the general contractor for the projects funded by the German and EU governments, the clinics are located in Lviv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Chernihiv regions.
The first clinic, located in Lviv, started operating in September. By the end of the year, GIZ Ukraine will open five more.
The clinics will be opened on the basis of modular structures, which reduced the project implementation time to eight months.
The hospitals are equipped with modern medical and laboratory equipment, including functional diagnostics (ECG, EEG, ultrasound, etc.), laboratory tests, general practitioner’s office, ENT, ophthalmologist, gynecologist, surgeon, manipulation and consultation rooms, and physiotherapy.
The hospitals are equipped with autonomous 70 kW solar stations designed to ensure the uninterrupted operation of all available medical equipment in the modules (excluding heating needs), as well as 160 kW diesel generators with fuel reserve.
The first of the six facilities to be put into operation in September 2023 was the modular diagnostic center at St. Luke’s Hospital of the First Territorial Medical Association of Lviv. A Philips Ingenia Ambition S magnetic resonance imaging scanner was purchased for the center. Some of the equipment was placed in a modular structure, and some was installed in the existing hospital premises.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH supports the German government in achieving its goals in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development. Priority areas of cooperation between Germany and Ukraine include good governance, energy efficiency and climate, and sustainable economic development. Special attention is also paid to supporting Ukrainian communities that have hosted internally displaced persons.
Estimated number of population in regions of Ukraine based on number of active mobile sim cards (mln)
Source: Open4Business.com.ua and experts.news
CSD LAB Medical Laboratory (Kyiv) has opened new laboratory offices in Cherkasy and Mykolaiv.
As the laboratory reports on its website, in particular, a new laboratory office was opened in Cherkasy in cooperation with the Avicenna Medical Center. The list of available services of this CSD LAB laboratory office includes more than 1500 tests, including general clinical, biochemical, immunochemical, microbiological, cytological and pathomorphological tests, as well as comprehensive tests for adults and children.
In addition, CSD LAB has expanded its network in Mykolaiv by opening two partner laboratory offices together with ZDRAVO, a modern medicine clinic in Mykolaiv.
As reported, at the beginning of 2023, the CSD LAB network included 40 laboratory offices. By the end of 2024, CSD LAB plans to increase the number of offices to 100.
CSD LAB is one of the leading laboratories in Ukraine that provides more than 1500 tests: from a complete blood count to the determination of genetic disorders in a tumor using the NGS method. For 13 years, CSD LAB has been one of the largest pathology laboratories in Eastern Europe.
Benchmark oil prices are declining on Thursday morning after falling the day before on the news of the postponement of the OPEC+ ministerial meeting and a sharp rise in US stockpiles.
January futures for Brent on the London ICE Futures exchange by 7:06 a.m. fell by $0.98 (1.2%) to $80.98 per barrel. On Wednesday, these contracts dropped by $0.49 to $81.96 per barrel, and during the session reached $78.41 per barrel.
Quotations for January futures for WTI in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) by this time decreased by $0.83 (1.08%) to $76.27 per barrel. At the end of the previous session, they dropped by $0.67 to $77.1 per barrel, the intraday low was $73.79 per barrel.
Market activity was reduced due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.
On Wednesday, it became known that the OPEC+ ministerial meeting was postponed from November 26 to November 30. The OPEC conference meeting previously scheduled for November 25 has also been postponed to November 30, the organization said.
Bloomberg reported that OPEC+, which had planned a meeting for this weekend, seems to have run into problems as Saudi Arabia expressed dissatisfaction with other member states over production levels.
According to unnamed delegates, as of Wednesday morning, it looked like the OPEC+ conference might be postponed indefinitely. Saudi Arabia, which has been cutting production by an additional 1 million barrels per day since July, was in difficult negotiations with other members over production levels, the delegates said, asking not to be identified because the talks were private.
According to Rystad Energy, in the absence of further production cuts, oil prices will remain around $80 per barrel next year.
The company notes that meetings of the OPEC+ Ministerial Committee have never been postponed for four days. However, an agreement on production cuts will be reached at the upcoming meeting, Rystad expects, while not ruling out the possibility of a deadlock in the negotiations.
Meanwhile, commercial oil stocks in the United States increased by 8.701 million barrels last week, according to the weekly report of the country’s Energy Ministry published the day before. Gasoline inventories for the week ended November 17 increased by 749 thousand barrels, while distillate stocks decreased by 1.018 million barrels.
Experts surveyed by Trading Economics expected an average increase in crude oil stocks by 1.16 million barrels, a decrease in gasoline stocks by 150 thousand barrels and a decrease in distillate stocks by 761 thousand barrels.
Inventories at the Cushing terminal, where NYMEX-traded crude is stored, increased by 858 thousand barrels over the week.
