South Korea plans to provide Ukraine with an additional 2 billion won ($1.6 million) in non-lethal aid this month, Yonhap News has reported, citing an informed source.
According to the source, Seoul is preparing to start sending items such as bulletproof vests, helmets, medical supplies and ready-to-eat food to Ukraine as early as next week.
South Korea plans to phase out new aid on civilian flights to Europe until the end of April.
Seoul already sent 1 billion won in aid last month.
Nova Poshta joined the UN World Food Programme (WFP), as part of cooperation, the company receives food from European countries, forms food packages from them and delivers them to settlements according to the UN vision, primarily to Ukraine’s hot spots.
As the Nova Poshta press service reported on Wednesday, the company provided its production facilities in western Ukraine for the needs of the UNHCR and the UN Refugee Agency.
It is noted that the UN is compiling a list of priority cities and towns, focusing on the places of hostilities and regions that are threatened with a humanitarian catastrophe.
As of the beginning of April (in one week of cooperation), Nova Poshta prepared and delivered about 25,000 food packages to Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.
In addition, the company transported more than 420 tonnes of household goods from the UNHCR to the IDPs.
Until the end of this month, Nova Poshta plans to deliver about 300,000 more sets to Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
“According to statistics, more than 10 million of our citizens have already been forced to leave their homes, hundreds of thousands still remain in dangerous cities and in conditions close to a humanitarian catastrophe, and we cannot stand aside. Even at the beginning of the war, we began transporting humanitarian aid across country and from abroad. We are now joining the UN programme. We are doing everything possible to make life at least a little easier for the Ukrainians most affected by the war,” Oleksandr Bulba, CEO of Nova Poshta, is quoted as saying.
In the nearest plans of the company – to start cooperation with other international organizations to provide Ukrainians with universal assistance.
Data from all of the capital’s air quality monitoring points have been included in the “Kyiv Digital” application, said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
“I will note that Kyiv continues to strengthen control over the state of atmospheric air. After all, military actions and shelling caused fires in the suburbs, from which the air condition on some days was unsatisfactory,” Klitschko stressed.
According to him, five stationary complexes of European standard are already working in the capital, carefully examining the quality of the air on about 10 indicators. It is also planned to add to them the measurement of the radiation background.
Kyiv plans to install three more stationary points of observation in Desniansky, Holosiyivsky and Sviatoshynsky districts in 2022.
There are also more than 40 indicative air monitoring stations in the capital, supplementing the data from the main stations.
PJSC ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) has resumed production and begins shipping to foreign consumers thanks to cooperation with Ukrzaliznytsia and attention to the enterprise from the government of the country.
According to head of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia Oleksandr Kamyshin, the railway continues to work according to the schedule, and now ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih is joining the work on schedule, which resumes work and launches the first furnace.
“Together with the railway team today at the plant we are meeting the first tonne of commercial pig iron. Let me remind you that three weeks ago, together with Minister of Infrastructure (Oleksandr) Kubrakov and First Deputy Prime Minister (Yulia) Svyrydenko, we were already in Kryvy Rih and we discussed with the management of the steel plant how the railway can help launch the plant. I am glad to be with the team of the steel plant at such a historic moment today. Let me remind you that the last time the Kryvy Rih iron and steel works was launched immediately after the Second World War,” the head of Ukrzaliznytsia wrote.
At the same time, he noted that the workers of the metallurgical plant receive work, “and, therefore, wages, the economy – taxes, and the railway – the same tonne of cargo that we have always fought for.”
In turn, General Director of ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih Mauro Longobardo, in an interview with the Kryvy Rih television company, noted that after the suspension of the enterprise’s activities due to hostilities, work in the mining sector continued at 30% of normal capacity. At the same time, work was suspended in the underground mine of the plant due to fear of a sudden power outage.
Gas reserves in underground storage facilities at the end of the heating season (HZP) 2021/2022 amount to 9 billion cubic meters. m, coal in warehouses – 1 million tons, said the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal.
“We have successfully completed the heating season. 9 billion cubic meters of gas in storage, 1 million tons of coal in warehouses. We will begin preparations for the next heating season,” the prime minister said in a televised address on Tuesday evening.
As reported, at the end of the 2020/2021 AWP, as of April 1, there were 0.491 million tons of coal in the warehouses of the TPP Group, while gas reserves amounted to almost 16 billion cubic meters.
1 million people have already registered as new internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of the Russian invasion on February 24, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. “We support internally displaced persons. 1 million people have already officially registered,” Shmyhal said in his address on Tuesday evening. The Prime Minister also noted that in the front-line cities, the authorities continue to distribute free food packages.
“The state buys products mainly from Ukrainian manufacturers in order to load them with orders. For most items, they purchased from 30 to 80% of everything they need,” he said. Shmygal also said that more than 5,000 employers have already applied for clarifications on receiving compensation for the employment of displaced persons. According to the Ministry of Social Policy, as of April 9, about 900,000 IDPs were officially registered in Ukraine. As the UN has previously noted, the Russian-led war against Ukraine has triggered one of the fastest-growing refugee and IDP emergencies on record: the organization predicts the number of IDPs in Ukraine has reached 7.1 million, up from 854,000 before the start of the war, and The number of refugees abroad could rise to 4 million from 53,000.
According to the UN map, there are about 2.9 million IDPs in western Ukraine, 1.4 million in the central regions on the right bank of the Dnieper, 1.3 million to the northeast of Kyiv, south near Kiev and north of Odessa and Nikolaev – 357 thousand each and on the left bank of the Dnieper in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – 857 thousand.
