The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will provide EUR140 million to support municipalities in Ukraine, EBRD Vice President for Policy and Partnerships Mark Bowman said.
“We need to support Ukraine, in particular the environmental infrastructure during the war and lay a strong foundation for its green recovery. This is a really important part of Ukraine’s European integration. I was very surprised by the super commitments that Ukraine has made on its way to the EU,” he said on the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin on Tuesday.
Bowman recalled that the EBRD has been supporting Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war and has invested more than EUR4 billion in support of Ukraine. In addition, investments in energy efficiency projects, water supply, water drainage, public transportation in Ukraine continue to receive about EUR160 million.
“We are ready to provide additional funding of EUR140 mln to support municipalities that face serious problems and are in a difficult situation. They need to cope with the devastation. These difficulties are big,” the EBRD representative emphasized.
Bowman also recalled that the EBRD has developed the Green Cities program. This project started in 2016 and seven Ukrainian cities joined it. They continue to work even in conditions of war. In particular, two participants of this program have introduced war plans and continue to implement them.
In addition, the EBRD this week announced a EUR55 million investment in a joint venture with Goldback Solar Investment to build and operate new renewable energy facilities, predominantly solar, on 522 MHz.
Dynamics of import of goods in Jan-Feb 2024 by the most important items in relation to the same period of 2023, %
Source: Open4Business.com.ua and experts.news
Ukrnafta has transferred UAH 3.5 billion in dividends to Naftogaz of Ukraine based on its 2023 performance, the company’s press service said on Tuesday.
Taking into account the previously transferred dividends for the previous year, the company paid a total of about UAH 8 billion to another shareholder represented by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine under this item.
“About UAH 8 billion has been transferred to the accounts and depositories of the company’s state shareholders – the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Naftogaz of Ukraine. The company is supporting the country’s economy and working for victory,” said Sergiy Koretsky, CEO of Ukrnafta.
As a reminder, in 2023, the company also paid UAH 25.7 billion in taxes and fees to the budgets of all levels.
As reported, in early February, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine established that Naftogaz of Ukraine should allocate 95% of its net profit to dividends, and Ukrnafta – 30%, provided that 50% of the profit will be used for capital investments approved by the government in the company’s financial plan for 2024.
“Ukrnafta, in which Naftogaz owns 50%+1 share, announced that in 2023 it made a net profit of UAH 23.6 billion compared to a loss of UAH 1.1 billion in 2022.
Earlier, Naftogaz Group CEO Oleksiy Chernyshev said that in terms of dividend policy, Naftogaz would receive UAH 12.1 billion from Ukrgasvydobuvannya last year, UAH 6.6 billion from Ukrtransgaz, UAH 5.3 billion from Ukrtransnafta, and UAH 3.5 billion from Ukrnafta.
“Ukrnafta is the largest oil producer in Ukraine and operates a national network of 537 filling stations, of which 456 are in operation.
The company is implementing a comprehensive program to restore operations and update the format of its filling stations. Since February 2023, Ukrnafta has been issuing its own fuel coupons and NAFTAKarta cards, which are sold to legal entities and individuals through Ukrnafta-Postach LLC.
Ukrnafta’s largest shareholder is Naftogaz of Ukraine with a 50%+1 share. On November 5, 2022, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine decided to transfer to the state a share of corporate rights of the company owned by private owners, which is now managed by the Ministry of Defense.
State enterprise NAEK Energoatom (Kiev) on June 11 announced a tender for compulsory motor third party liability insurance for owners of land vehicles (MTPL).
According to the Prozorro electronic public procurement system, the total expected cost is UAH -1.645 mln.
The deadline for submitting tender documents is June 19.
The choice of a domain, the name of your website, and further work on its trustworthiness and authority determine how high positions it will occupy in search results, and, accordingly, how much traffic it will bring to your site.
In this article, we’ll look at the different types of domains, what terms apply to each type, and most importantly, we’ll determine which domains are worth registering in which cases to get more visitors and increase conversions.
Expired domains are those domain names that have become available for new registrations after the previous owner failed to pay. The business may have closed, the website may have been abandoned, the site owner or developer may have failed to pay the renewal invoice on time, or for some reason simply did not want to do so. There can be many reasons for this.
It should be noted that overdue domains are not released immediately after non-payment.
Registration of drop domains is primarily suitable for those who want to bring their website to the top as
quickly as possible, but at the same time legally, without using aggressive promotion methods. Also, expired domains are often used for satellite sites to collect thematic traffic and redirect it to the main site or for PBN, a network of sites with a history that also link to the main resource.
However, it’s worth noting that domains with a history can be both useful and dangerous from an SEO perspective.
Over the course of several years, a domain can acquire a lot of backlinks, traffic, a bunch of keywords in the content, visibility, and reputation among users and search engines. Therefore, bringing an old domain to the top of the SERPs is always a much easier process than promoting a new one from scratch.
SEO specialists are on the hunt for good expired domains. After all, the purchased site can be glued to your own through a 301 redirect, and then the entire link mass will go from the drop to the existing resource, the SEO of which needs to be boosted. For this purpose, domain backorders are used in particular.
The idea is that you submit an application to track the status of a desired busy domain, and when it becomes available for registration, the service’s script automatically intercepts it and registers it for you. Not so long ago, HostPro, a Ukrainian host and domain registrar, started offering this service.
But there is another side to the story with expired domains. If the former site that was hosted on this drop-domain has been sanctioned by search engines, it will be much harder to bring it to the top.
So before you buy a domain with a history, be sure to check its presence in the domain database under filters and sanctions. You can do this through the Norton Safe Web and Host-Tracker services. There’s also an old-fashioned method: enter site: domain in the search bar and see the number of results. If there are a lot of them, it means that it is not under filters.
Advantages of drop domains
Regional domains, or geographic domains, are a term used for top-level domains that denote cities and regions, not only Ukrainian ones.
Examples of regional domains: .KYIV.UA (Ukraine), .BEDZIN.PL (Poland), .AMSTERDAM (Netherlands).
Regional domains are usually registered for local and small businesses of any kind: smoked cheese production from sheep’s milk, river rafting, hostels, restaurants, local car service, etc.
Also, regional domains are a great choice for businesses that have offices in different regions of the country and want to gain local trust in each of them.
Advantages of regional domains:
National or territorial domains (sometimes also called regional domains) indicate to search engines and users in which region the site operates (.UA – Ukraine, .US – United States, .IT – Italy, .EU – European Union). This way, customers can even intuitively understand that goods from this site can be delivered to their city.
It is worth noting that national domains often have certain restrictions for registration. For example, to register a domain in the .ua zone, you must have a registered trademark with an identical domain name, and to get a name in the .it zone, for example, you must be a resident of Italy, the European Union, or the Schengen zone (Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway).
Anyone can register a domain in the national .UA zone, only confirmed companies and organizations with a registered trademark can.
Advantages of national domains:
Topical domains (newGTLDs) are the newest domain zones in the history of the global web space that do not belong to specific countries or regions but are created to demonstrate the theme of a website.
As a rule, these are zones written in Latin, and the variety of such domains is as wide as the wide range of website topics – from gaming (.GAME, .GAMES) to floristry (.FLORIST, .GARDEN, .BIO), from financial websites (.FINANCIAL, .ACCOUNTANT, .BARGAINS) to news resources (.NEWS, .TODAY).
Thematic zones can be defined as highly customized and as universal as possible. They are suitable for virtually any business website, whether local or represented in several regions. Information resources and non-profit organizations can also easily make themselves known with a thematic domain.
Advantages of thematic domains:
Cyrillic domains (IDNs, Internationalized Domain Names) are domain names written in Cyrillic rather than the usual Latin alphabet and are aimed at an audience that uses Cyrillic characters. To make them understandable to the system, there is Punycode, a coding method that converts Cyrillic text into Latin. That is, in fact, the domain “towel.ukr” exists only in the Latin encoding format “xn--h1aehlp4a.xn--j1amh”. And the browser shows it to you in Cyrillic.
Examples of Cyrillic zones and their Punycode:
Website names in Cyrillic have one significant drawback: you can’t create a nice domain email for them. Your corporate email will look a bit spammy – “@xn-d1acufc.xn-j1amh” rather than “@domain.ukr”.
But if, for example, you have a landing page, blog, non-profit organization, or the appearance of your email and copied links is simply not important to you, a Cyrillic domain will be a very good choice.
Cyrillic domains are also often used for mirror sites: they buy the same domain in parallel, but in a Latin zone, and glue the two domains and all links together with a 301 redirect.
Advantages of Cyrillic domains:
Mirror domains is a term that has different meanings in the Ukrainian and Western web space. Mirror domains on the Ukrainian Internet are groups of two or three regional Ukrainian domain zones of the .KYIV.UA – .KIEV.UA type. They are used to designate websites of the same city and region, but have different spellings due to differences in Ukrainian and Russian transliteration or abbreviations.
It should be noted that in some regional zones with Russian transliteration, new registrations have already been suspended. These are, in particular, .CHERNIGOV.UA, .CHERNOVTSY.UA, .KHMELNITSKIY.UA, .ROVNO.UA, DNEPROPETROVSK.UA and .DNIPROPETROVSK.UA.
Examples of mirrored domain zones | ||
.KYIV.UA | .KIEV.UA | |
.VINNYTSIA.UA | .VINNICA.UA | |
.RIVNE.UA | .ROVNO.UA | |
.MK.UA | .MYKOLAIV.UA | .NIKOLAEV.UA |
.OD.UA | .ODESA.UA | .ODESSA.UA |
If we consider the term mirror domains globally, it means different domains with a common IP address. In other words, they are simply alternative domains for websites with the same (though not always identical) content. For example, if you go to amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, and amazon.de, you will be taken to the same Amazon website.
This practice is used by companies that want to prevent competitors from buying their domain, but in a different zone and setting up a redirect to their website.
Note that there is also such a thing as a “website mirror” (spoiler alert – this is not the same as mirror domains). This is a complete copy of a website that is simply hosted on another server. Website mirrors can be used for data backup, local deployment, or to provide faster access to content for users from different countries.
In Ukrainian practice, it works like this. When you register one of the mirror domains, for example, example.kiev.ua, the domain example.kyiv.ua is automatically reserved for you as the owner of the first domain. Whether you register it or not depends only on your desire and budget, because then you will have to pay for the renewal of two domains at the same time. However, it is guaranteed that no one else will be able to register your domain in the mirror zone.
And here’s another tip: not all shortened versions of domain zones are mirrored, for example, the .OD.UA – .ODESA.UA – .ODESSA.UA group are mirrored domains, but .VINNYTSIA.UA and VN.UA are not, and if you register one of them, the other will no longer be automatically reserved for you. So, in theory, competitors will be able to buy one of these free domains and advertise on it.
You can find the full list of mirror domains here.
Premium domains are web addresses that are considered more valuable than regular domains and usually consist of several characters. They are easy to remember and enter in a search. The list of premium domains is determined by the administrator of the domain zone in which they are served.
These are usually international keyword names relevant to certain industries and are much more expensive than other domains in the same domain zone. For example, a one-year registration of testovyi.com will cost $19.75, while cars.com will cost $872 million.
Such domains can be sold at an inflated price even right from the first year of registration, or they can become premium domains later, after the brand or website has been promoted.
They are usually bought through domain markets or through specialized brokers, as they can reach prices of hundreds to millions of dollars, depending on the value and demand.
Premium domains are considered a strategic investment for companies and individuals. They are often purchased for the purpose of further resale. After all, any short domain may someday increase in value a hundred times or even more.
Advantages of premium domains:
Ukrainian, and mostly foreign, domain zone registrars often make discounts on domains or give them as a gift to the hosting plan. HostPro, for example, gives you a free .COM.UA domain if you order any hosting plan for 12 months or more. They do this primarily for the convenience of the client – it is much more convenient to manage interrelated domain and hosting services from one account. In other words, you can actually get a domain for free.
However, if you want to choose a zone for your website other than the one offered for hosting, but your hosting and domain name budgets are small, you can choose one of the promotional offers. Domains on offer are mostly international thematic domains, such as .PICS, .VIP, .FUN, .PRO, etc. They can be registered for just a few dollars a year.
In addition, in order to popularize our regional zones in the correct Ukrainian transliteration, domestic registrars often launch promotions for the same .KYIV.UA, for example. At Hostpro, you can buy a domain in the .KYIV.UA zone for just 99 UAH until July 31, 2024.
Registration of top names at an affordable price is something that startups, test dev sites, non-budget organizations, and student websites for IT courses often lack.
Advantages of promotional domains:
Your domain name is an often underestimated but, as practice shows, very important detail in the process of creating and promoting a website. If it’s long and incomprehensible, doesn’t match your brand name, or at least isn’t associated with the site’s subject matter, the resource may seem unprofessional or even spammy.
At the same time, a well-thought-out domain name can boost your rankings in search engine results and give your audience a clear idea of what to expect when they visit your site.
You can register domains of all types with the domain registrar and hosting provider HostPro. Transferring a website from a previous provider is free.
During the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, Ukrhydroenergo and the international corporation AECOM signed a memorandum of cooperation in the implementation of projects aimed at restoring and reconstructing hydropower facilities.
According to the website of the operator of Ukrainian hydroelectric power plants and pumped storage plants on Tuesday, AECOM will act as a technical consultant for the restoration of Ukraine’s hydropower infrastructure.
“AECOM has many years of professional experience in the development, design and reconstruction of hydropower facilities and dams around the world. The signing of the Memorandum and our cooperation will be another important step in the restoration of the damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure in general, and hydropower generation in particular,” said Ihor Syrota, CEO of Ukrhydroenergo, as quoted in the company’s statement.
According to him, the signing of the memorandum will also help create incentives and guarantees at the state level to attract investment and innovative technologies in the energy sector.
“We are proud to cooperate with Ukrhydroenergo, and we are strengthening our role in supporting the restoration of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure,” AECOM CEO Troy Rudd said, as quoted by the press service of Ukrhydroenergo.
AECOM, hydropower generation, MEMORANDUM, RESTORATION, UKRHYDROENERGO