President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announces her intention to allocate new macro-financial assistance to Ukraine in 2022 in the amount of up to 9 billion euros.
“We offer Ukraine a new exceptional macro-financial assistance of up to 9 billion euros in 2022,” she said on Wednesday in Brussels.
According to the president of the European Commission, these funds will be allocated for the short term for “existing needs, to support the government, the state budget.”
Smoke is possible in Kyiv due to fires in the Kyiv region, in particular, in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to the Telegram channel of the Kyiv City State Administration on Wednesday.
“The State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone informs that the radiation state is within control levels. Smoke may move towards Vyshgorod and Kyiv, both from fires in the exclusion zone and from fires near Ivankov and the village of Strakholesye outside the exclusion zone. Extinguishing complicated by the wind, limited technical resources due to the consequences of the occupation – theft and destruction of a large amount of equipment and fuel, as well as the threat of mine explosions,” the report says.
According to the Kyiv City State Administration, as of 17:00, the air quality on the right and left banks of the capital is within the normal range, no excess of the maximum permissible concentrations of pollutants was found.
At the same time, the city authorities urge the people of Kiev to close windows in case of smoke and, if possible, not to be in the open air. In addition, if available, air conditioning and air purification systems should be turned on. In case of smoke, experts advise to carry out wet cleaning, increase indoor air humidity, increase fluid intake up to 2-3 liters per day for adults.
The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved the candidacy of Bridget Brink for the post of US Ambassador to Ukraine, the committee’s Twitter account reported on Wednesday.
“The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed Bridget Brink’s candidacy for Ambassador to Ukraine with a powerful message: U.S. support for Ukraine continues to grow,” the committee wrote on Twitter.
Now her candidacy will have to be approved by the full Senate in the coming days.
Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that the American embassy in Kyiv officially resumed its work. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that “additional measures have been taken to ensure the safety of our colleagues who are returning to Kyiv.”
Bridget Brink has been an employee of the US State Department since 1996, and since 2019 she has been the US Ambassador to Slovakia.
In its new video, the YouTube channel “Club of Experts” analyzed the situation in the Ukrainian economy before the start of the Russian aggression. As you know, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine has temporarily suspended the publication of statistical information for the period of martial law, as well as for three months from the moment it ends. The exception is the publication of data on the consumer price index, separate information on statistical indicators for 2021, as well as for the period January-February 2022.
If we return to the indicators of the beginning of the year, at that time we could talk about economic growth and recovery after the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, says the founder of the Club of Experts, Candidate of Economic Sciences Maxim Urakin.
“Officially, the number of unemployed in the country, according to the State Employment Center, as of January 2022, was just over 358,000 people. In this direction, there was a positive trend and the recovery of jobs after the labor market crisis that was caused by the pandemic,” he explained.
In addition, the expert noted that according to the State Statistics Service, Ukraine’s GDP in 2021 grew by 3.4% after a decline of 3.8% a year earlier. At the same time, there was an increase in industrial production and retail trade within the country.
“Industrial production in Ukraine in 2021 increased by 1.1% after a 5% drop in 2020. At the same time, in 2021, compared to the twentieth, the retail trade turnover increased significantly, by more than ten percent and amounted to more than one trillion four hundred forty-three billion hryvnia,” Urakin added.
All this, according to the founder of the Club of Experts, may indicate that in the pre-war period the country’s economy showed positive indicators of development.
The full video can be viewed on the YouTube channel “Expert Club” at the link:
The situation in Ukraine will be one of the central topics of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, which will be held this year from May 22 to 26, Swiss media reported on Wednesday.
They note that after a two-year break caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Davos Forum will be held in person.
The event will be attended by about 2 thousand people, including about 50 world leaders.
For the first time in many years, the WEF will be held this year without Russian participation, Swiss media indicate.
They also draw attention to the fact that the list of invitees to the forum does not look as impressive as in previous years. So, neither US President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris will come to Davos this year. China will also not be widely represented.
Head of the State Archival Service of Ukraine Anatoliy Khromov states that today in Ukraine, a maximum of 5% of archival documents have been digitized.
“In archival terms, we are one of the largest countries in Europe. We have 86 million storage units only, most often these are cases on paper, which, according to the regulations, can contain up to 250 sheets, that is, billions of copies,” Khromov said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, the pace of digitization in previous periods, unfortunately, was quite low, but now the agency has achieved that last year the pace of digitization increased by 500%.
“But even this is quite small, because earlier the pace was such that it would take thousands of years to fully digitize. Therefore, I am not ready to say for sure, but as of now, a maximum of 5% of documents have been digitized,” the head of the Archive said.
Khromov said that the agency is trying to attract international partners, because there is no state digitization program and has never existed.
“We planned that together with our partners we could digitize all key documents of interest to people in the future for seven-ten years: metric records, books of civil registration offices, population censuses. It would be quite real. And now, even despite the war, we are signing such agreements because we believe that as soon as it becomes safe in the region, we can continue these digital projects,” he concluded.
As reported, in May, Ukrainian State Archival Service presented an interarchive search portal, which allows access through a single window to digital archive resources. At the moment, the digital resources of three central state archives of Ukraine are presented on the platform, together they are almost 1.5 million full-text scanned copies of archival documents, to which a full-fledged search engine has been created. In particular, we are talking about the Central State Archive of the Supreme Authorities and Administration of Ukraine, the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine, the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine.
