Passenger flow through the western border of Ukraine in apr 2022, thousand (graphically)
Data: State Border Service
Warsaw intends to propose Ukraine for entry into the International Energy Agency (IEA) at the organization’s next meeting in Paris, Polish Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa said in an interview with BiznesAlert.
“Poland wants to represent Ukraine to the International Energy Agency at the next meeting in Paris. To begin with, we would like to announce it as an observer. We already have the support of the head of the IEA,” she said.
She noted that Poland is currently negotiating the import of electricity from Ukraine.
The minister also said that the republic continues to supply oil products to Ukraine, but already on a commercial basis.
“At the beginning of the war and after the bombing of the refinery, we sent fuel free of charge. At present, these are commercial deliveries of Orlen, which require large logistics costs,” the minister said.
The IEA was created by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in 1974 to help coordinate a collective response to severe oil supply disruptions.
The participating states are the United States, UK, Australia, Austria, Japan, South Korea, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Turkey. The associate members of the IEA are Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand.
Ukraine is completing consultations with the European Commission on its involvement in the international environmental program LIVE, launched in 1992, with a budget for 2021-2027 of more than EUR5.5 billion, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strilets said.
“We are completing consultations on Ukraine’s accession to LIVE, and I am sure that within a few weeks, maybe a month, we will invite the European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevičius to Ukraine to finalize our agreements and join the modern financial instrument with a budget of 5.5 billion euros,” Strilec said on the air of the nationwide telethon “UA Together” on Monday.
The Minister noted that at the opening of the ongoing European Green Week, Sinkevičius urged the Europeans to pay close attention to the issue of involving Ukraine in the LIVE program.
“The attitude of the European Commissioner towards Ukraine is so warm that he clearly said that we should pay attention to the restoration of Ukraine under the LIVE program. This gives me confidence that we will soon receive concrete funds for the implementation of specific projects,” the minister described the situation.
He added that Ukraine has applied to the relevant department of the European Commission with a request to help in the quality preparation of the projects that it will submit.
In addition, Strylets specified that in Ukraine about 200 specialists of the Ecological Safety working group of the National Council for the Reconstruction of Ukraine under the head of state are working on such projects.
According to him, the implementation of projects within the framework of the LIVE program can become an effective method of overcoming the consequences of the military actions of the Russian Federation, in particular, in the direction of restoring the environment and preserving biodiversity.
He added that the program finances innovative projects very quickly.
According to the minister, in Ukraine, due to the aggression of the Russian Federation, about 20% of the area of all protected areas is under the threat of destruction, and the fighting has engulfed 12 national parks and reserves.
“About 3,000 hectares of forests have been damaged by shelling, on the territory of more than 500,000 hectares, hostilities are still ongoing. The situation is difficult in the Kherson region, where more than 4,000 hectares of forests have been destroyed by fire,” Sagittarius cited examples.
He noted that Ukraine is doing its best to calculate all the losses caused by the Russian Federation and make claims “either in the form of claims to international courts, or in the general basket of reparations.”
As previously reported, Strilets noted that Ukraine recorded approximately more than 100 cases of ecocide caused by shelling and seizure of territories by Russian troops.
According to him, on the basis of the State Ecological Inspectorate, there is an appropriate headquarters, the purpose of which is to record such crimes, including the calculation of losses. The Ministry of Natural Resources is also preparing an update of the Ecosystem electronic platform launched before the war, which will record all cases of environmental damage and open information on the preliminary extent of damage in order to subsequently create a common database.
Kyiv is allocating funds and is starting to reconstruct and overhaul residential buildings and premises of the social infrastructure of the capital, damaged by the shelling of Russian barbarians. This was announced by the mayor of the capital Vitali Klitschko in the Telegram channel on Monday.
“The capital allocates about UAH 600 million from the budget. The government promised to provide another UAH 200 million. We very much count on it. After all, almost 390 buildings need to be restored in the capital. Of these, more than 220 are residential buildings. Others are social infrastructure facilities (medical institutions, kindergartens, schools, social security institutions, administrative buildings),” Klitschko wrote.
The new US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink arrived in Kyiv on May 29, according to a message on the website of the US Embassy in Ukraine.
“Ambassador Brink was appointed by President Biden as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine on April 25, 2022, confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on May 18, 2022, and arrived in Kyiv on May 29, 2022,” Brink’s biography on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine reads.
President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola did not rule out that the war in Ukraine could lead to real famine in different regions of the world, and called on the heads of state and government of the EU countries to find ways to export food from Ukraine for export.
“The threat (of food insecurity) goes beyond Europe. It is possible that the world will face real hunger. If Ukraine is not allowed to work in its fields, we will face a global multi-year food shortage,” she said on Monday at an emergency EU summit.
Metsola accused Russia of blackmailing the whole world and “stealing” grain produced by Ukraine.
“We urgently need to find ways to ship grain from Ukraine to those regions of the world where it is most needed,” she urged. “We must expand the “corridors of solidarity” as announced by the European Commission, and explore other possibilities for the export of grain.”
