US Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has arrived in Ukraine on a visit, said Nate Evans, Director of Communications and Press Secretary of the US Mission to the UN.
“The US Ambassador to the UN is in Kyiv for a day of meetings to reaffirm the unwavering US support for Ukraine as it defends its freedom and sovereignty in the face of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion,” Evans tweeted on Tuesday.
While in Kyiv, Thomas-Greenfield will meet with Ukrainian government leaders to discuss the unwavering US commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence, according to the US Embassy in Ukraine. She will oversee efforts to document and preserve evidence of atrocities committed by Russian forces and hear first-hand accounts from survivors.
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield will also discuss the global food security crisis exacerbated by Russia’s invasion and stress the urgent need to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative into next year. She will also meet with humanitarian organizations working to meet the winterization needs of vulnerable populations affected by Russian attacks on energy and other civilian infrastructure.
The Cabinet of Ministers has exempted generators, transformers and other goods important for the heating season from VAT and import duties, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said.
“Today the Cabinet of Ministers will approve a resolution, thanks to which important goods for the passage of this heating season will be exempt from payment of VAT and import duty,” Shmygal said at a government meeting on Tuesday.
These include gas generators, electric motors and generators, electric generating sets and rotating electrical converters, transformers, electric batteries, electric water heaters and heaters, and some other energy and heat supply goods.
“This is important to speed up repairs now, improve light and heat supply, meet public demand and reduce prices of related products,” he added.
The limited volume of gross absorption led to an increase in the level of vacant space by 3.5 percentage points (p.p.), to 21.2% over the third quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter, the press service of CBRE Ukraine told Interfax-Ukraine.
At the same time, as follows from a review of office real estate by CBRE Ukraine, in July-September the trend of the two previous quarters of limited rental activity continued. In the third quarter, this figure was only 12,000 square meters, which is 80% less than at the beginning of the year. Most of the transactions involved the extension or renegotiation of contracts and the reduction of existing office space.
“Subleasing is becoming more and more common, with tenants willing to sublease parts of their offices to optimize rent or operating costs due to low occupancy rates. Depending on the terms of the lease, subleasing is most often the solution if leases cannot be terminated. However, the volume of sublease agreements concluded remains low due to limited rental activity in the market,” Diana Kvitchuk, Head of Marketing and Research at CBRE Ukraine, is quoted in the message.
Net absorption has remained negative for three quarters in a row – over the third quarter, it is minus 74,000 square meters.
Analysts at CBRE Ukraine estimate that negative net absorption is likely to persist until the end of 2022, but is expected to slow down towards the end of the year.
In the third quarter, not a single new business center was put on the market, so the total supply of offices in Kyiv did not change and amounted to about 2.11 million square meters. About 23,500 square meters are planned for commissioning by the end of the year – in Unit.City B15 and Unit.City B6.
Low market activity led to rate cuts. The prime rental rate has decreased on average by 8-10%, from $25 to $22-23 per square meter/month since the beginning of the year. Rental rates in class A ranged from $18 to $26 (less by 7% of lower limit), in class B – from $7 to $17 (less by 22% of lower limit and less by 15% of upper limit).
“Requested rental rates are not indicative now, since the actual or effective terms of the agreements are often significantly lower than the declared ones and the difference can be from minus 20% to minus 50% of the declared ones,” Kvitchuk said.
In order to maintain occupancy and income streams, landlords continue to provide discounts, special lease terms or incentives, up to “free” rent, to attract new tenants or keep existing tenants looking to move, she said.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with the support of the EU, purchased and donated 14 automatic external defibrillators to healthcare facilities in the regions of Ukraine.
According to a UNDP press release, medical facilities in Sumy, Chernihiv, Kamianske (Dnipropetrovsk region), Voznesensk (Mykolaiv region), Nova Vodolaha, Pervomaisk and Lozova (Kharkiv region) received medical equipment.
With the financial support from the European Union, UNDP also provided specialized training to more than a hundred medical workers on using the life-saving devices.
“In response to new challenges, the EU provides the necessary tools to help people survive and recover from injuries. In particular, we want to direct our support to those areas where needs are greatest and increasing daily,” Frederik Coene, Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said.
A defibrillator is a small device that plays an important role in saving the lives of people who have had a heart attack.
The United Nations Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme (UN RPP) is being implemented by four United Nations agencies: the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Eleven international partners support the Programme: the European Union (EU), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, and the governments of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.
The Ministry of Education and Science recommends that schools create flexible schedules for the educational process that will correlate with power outage schedules, First Deputy Minister Andriy Vitrenko said.
“As for secondary education applicants, we advise teaching staff to create flexible schedules for the educational process, which will correlate with the schedules of power cuts in a particular educational institution. That’s the only solution that exists today,” he said at a briefing on Tuesday.
According to him, such recommendations also apply to other levels of education in the country.
Vitrenko noted that with this approach it is possible to use both synchronous and asynchronous training.
In addition, the department is working on various mechanisms to implement the possibility for children, when they have electricity, to download on their gadgets benchmark lessons for study.
The State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine will create an atlas of forest roads of Ukraine, a pilot project of mapping of transport infrastructure of individual forestries in the Carpathian region will soon be implemented.
As Yuriy Bolohovets, the Head of Department informed, the development of atlas is necessary because the existing forest road maps are outdated and not always correspond to reality, so it is not possible to drive on many of the roads marked on them.
“To date, it has been decided to create “Atlas of forest roads of Ukraine” in the future. In the nearest future a pilot project of transport development of a separate forestry will be realized. All existing forest roads, which can be used by a forest car, will be mapped and a network of routes for forest roads construction in the future will be designed,” – the Head of Department wrote in Facebook on Tuesday.
He also reminded that the inventory process of forest transportation network was initiated by the State Forestry Agency 11 years ago, when they issued an order on the introduction of geographic information systems for registration and inventory of forest roads. However, this system accounted mainly for newly constructed roads.
Bolokhovets noted that Ukraine’s need for the construction of new roads is estimated at thousands of kilometers per year, while in fact hundreds of kilometers of roads are built and repaired annually.
“In recent years, maintenance and construction of new roads has been carried out mainly at the expense of forestry enterprises, based on the financial status of each of them. Therefore, the volume of new roads leaves much to be desired. For example, 240 kilometers of forest roads were built, repaired and reconstructed in 2020. In 2021, 131 km of roadbed was built and 161 km of roadbed was arranged. Construction this year continues, but the volume is also small. The need is much more, “- summed up the head of the State Forestry Agency.
