Teachers of Ukrainian universities are actively getting vaccines against COVID-19, the activity of students in vaccination is somewhat lower, the participants of a roundtable entitled “Results of the admission campaign and realities of higher education in Ukraine amid the pandemic at leading Kyiv universities” at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
Head of the educational department of Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, PhD in Technical Sciences Andriy Shpakov, in particular, said that the university is currently preparing the fourth wave of vaccination of teachers.
“We have a fairly high percentage of teachers who are vaccinated and this percentage will increase when we conduct the fourth wave of vaccination. We invite mobile teams that come and vaccinate everyone,” he said.
Shpakov said that the vaccination of both teachers and students is voluntary.
At the same time, he said that “in the recent wave of vaccination, the majority of those vaccinated were exactly students, although students do not really want to be vaccinated in large numbers, so we are conducting explanatory work.”
In turn, Head of the Management and Economics Department of the International European University Yulia Remyha said that the university began to vaccinate teachers in April, inviting mobile vaccination teams for this.
“Vaccination is voluntary, but the teachers take it responsibly. Today, out of all our staff, about 86% have already been vaccinated,” she said.
At the same time, according to Remyha, early September, the university organized vaccinations for students.
“On the part of the administration, both for teachers and for students, everything is done to get vaccinated conveniently, so that health is preserved,” she said.
For his part, Deputy First Vice-Rector, Head of Scientific and Methodological Department of Ihor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI) Serhiy Hozhiy said that the university during the summer invited vaccination teams for voluntary vaccination of teachers and students.
“In KPI, more than 80% are already vaccinated,” he said.
Commenting on the living conditions of nonresident students, Hozhiy said that “special rooms and blocks, isolation wards have been organized in the hostels, where sick students are accommodated, but no one is forcing them to vaccinate.”
Vice-Rector for scientific and pedagogical work of Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University Anatoliy Kolot said that this university is also conducting explanatory work on the need for vaccination.
“Nobody is forcing. We appeal to conscience. We have involved public and trade union organizations, student government. There have already been two waves of centralized vaccination, we are conducting another wave on September 29-30,” he said.
At the same time, Kolot said that universities need more detailed explanations regarding the vaccination rate for 80% of employees.
“Obviously, there should be more explanations from our central authorities, because everything is limited to the 80% standard. But explanations are needed, what to do if there are people who are contraindicated in vaccination, and there are people who have been ill and they have antibodies,” he said.
Kolot said that the university is currently collecting information on the number of employees who have been ill.
At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that “it is not clear what to do if the whole family has been ill, but only one family member has turned to the family doctor and has a confirmation of the illness.”
“Where can those family members who have been ill get a certificate, if only one family member is recorded? There are such cases,” he said.
COVID-19, HOZHIY, INTERNATIONAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY, KNUBA, KOLOT, KPI, KYIV NATIONAL ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY, REMYHA, SHPAKOV, TEACHERS, URAKIN
World heavyweight boxing champion according to IBF, WBA Super, WBO, and IBO Oleksandr Usyk would like to become the owner of five belts and is not going to wait two or three years for this.
“And I don’t want to wait two or three years. It’s a lot to wait two or three years. I currently have four belts … the main belt is currently at Tyson Fury,” Usyk said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.
The athlete noted that “I would very much like to have a unification fight”, but this is possible only after he has a rematch with Briton Anthony Joshua, and Fury will meet in the ring with Deontay Wilder, where the winner will be determined.
Usyk emphasized that there were no unification fights in the heavyweight category “for … about 30 years.”
According to Usyk, he does not follow his progress in the ratings and he does not care about this. “I’ve got it calmly. You know what makes me happy when my son goes to school and doesn’t cry. He doesn’t like going to school … and I say to him: “It is necessary, it’s cool to go to school.” It’s kind of cheating because I didn’t want to go to school either.”
Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk became the owner of the IBF, WBO, WBA Super, and IBO heavyweight championship belts (over 90,718 kg), having taken them away from Briton Anthony Joshua.
The Ukrainian won the fight, which took place at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London, by unanimous decisions of all referees (117-112, 116-112, 115-113).
The official presentation of the project “Governance and Local Accountability (Hoverla) Activity” with a budget of $74 million, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), took place in Kyiv.
“After the successful local elections in 2020, when Ukrainians elected representatives of their newly united regions and communities, now is the time to start a new phase in decentralization. Decentralization reform can ensure that all levels of Ukraine’s leadership represent the best modern democratic practices,” U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Ukraine Kristina Kvien said at the project presentation in Kyiv on Monday.
She said that one of the key next steps in decentralization is to adopt an amendment to the Ukrainian Constitution. “This is a long debated step and I encourage you all to work together to complete it,” Kvien said.
In turn, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed that for the irreversibility of the reform, it is important to introduce and consolidate in the Constitution of Ukraine the appropriate changes regarding a new model of local government, the territorial organization of power, built on the principles of decentralization and subsidiarity.
“Regarding the government’s action program in decentralization, I want to say that in order to complete the reform, the government is introducing a number of important measures to decentralize power and reform local government. Relevant bills for their implementation are already being developed,” he said.
According to the head of government, we are talking about the delineation of powers and the creation of appropriate material financial conditions for their implementation, reformatting local government administrations into prefectural-type agencies, improving the forms of inter-municipal cooperation as an effective mechanism for cooperation of territorial communities, introducing a new municipal service, improving the forms of attracting residents to making managerial decisions and determining the procedure for resolving issues of the administrative territorial structure.
“The government focuses on strengthening the institutional and financial capacity of communities and their development,” Shmyhal said. The prime minister said the pilot areas of the project have already been selected, Volyn, Lviv, Poltava, and also add there is a need to expand the geography of the project to other regions and other communities.
Chief of the Hoverla project Gabriel Abraham said the project has already identified the first 25 partner communities from Lviv, Poltava and Volyn regions.
“During the implementation of the project, Hoverla plans to use replicable models and mechanisms to increase support for two more communities with the involvement of partners, associations of local government, other civil society actors and government agencies,” he said.
Abraham said the project is designed for five years, until 2026. “The activities of Hoverla are based on three principal goals. The first goal is to support policies and laws. The second goal is to support local officials. The third goal is to support the interaction of citizens with their officials,” the project manager said.
Dragon Capital investment company has completed the acquisition of a new A class Viking business center in Lviv, the press service reported. “This is our second business center in Lviv and the 14th in the Dragon Capital portfolio of office real estate in Ukraine,” CEO of Dragon Capital Tomas Fiala said.
The business center, located at the intersection of Zelena and Pimonenko Streets in Sykhiv district of Lviv, was commissioned in August 2021. The object consists of two sections (9 and 12 floors) with a total area of 18,700 square meters, and includes a parking lot for 102 cars.
The business center was built according to the “green” BREEAM certification standards.
Dragon Capital is one of the largest investment groups in Ukraine in the field of investment and financial services, providing a full range of investment banking and brokerage services, direct investments, asset management for institutional, corporate and private clients. The company was founded in Kyiv in 2000. One of the key activities of Dragon Capital is investment in the real estate market.
The commercial real estate portfolio is managed by Dragon Capital Property Management. As of September 2021, it manages 31 commercial real estate objects, including 14 office objects, six retail real estate objects and 11 logistics complexes, with a total area of 778,000 sq m.
Diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Russia are limited only to consular services, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Republic of Turkey Vasyl Bodnar said on the air of the Dom television channel. “Relations between the countries [Ukraine and Russia] are coming to naught, and are limited only to meeting these consular needs,” he said.
However, Ukraine did not break off diplomatic relations with Russia, because no country agreed to represent Kyiv’s interests in Moscow, although “this decision should have been made back in 2014, when the active phase of hostilities started.”
“But at the same time, millions of Ukrainians are in Russia. Then they were working, and now for various reasons. And for the most part, our diplomatic presence there is focused on consular work. This means that consuls provide our citizens with documents, visit them in prisons, and there are several thousand, and plus, the political hostages of the Kremlin from Crimea, this is the representation of our interests in courts, in other institutions,” he said.
Bodnar mentioned Georgia, which broke off diplomatic relations with Russia after the 2008 war, represented by Switzerland.
“We carried out a ‘probing’ of positions, none of the countries represented in Moscow agreed to represent our interests, given the amount of work that would have to be done to ensure the interests of our citizens,” the diplomat said.
Bodnar said now the diplomatic presence between the countries is at a low level: there is no ambassador of either Ukraine in Russia or Russia in Ukraine.
He also said that, most likely, such representation will only decrease.
The total public debt of Ukraine in August 2021 in U.S. dollars decreased by 0.5%, or by $440 million, to $92.53 billion, the Ministry of Finance said on its website.
According to the ministry, in hryvnia terms, due to the slight strengthening of the hryvnia, the national debt decreased by 0.6%, or by UAH 14.28 billion, to UAH 2.485 trillion.
The Ministry of Finance specified that external debt in August also decreased by 0.5%, or by $290 million, to $54.49 billion, including direct – by 0.3%, or by $120 million, to $45.41 billion.
According to the ministry, in August, state guarantees on loans from Ukreximbank increased by UAH 4.58 billion, to UAH 10.85 billion, as a result of which the domestic state-guaranteed debt also increased by UAH 4.63 billion, to UAH 41.42 billion. However, due to the redemption of government bonds, as a whole the aggregate domestic public debt in the past month decreased by 0.5%, or by UAH 5.11 billion, to UAH 1.022 trillion.
In general, since the beginning of the year in dollar terms, the total state debt of Ukraine has increased by 2.5%, or by $2.3 billion, while thanks to the strengthening of the hryvnia to UAH 26.86/$1 from UAH 28.27/$1, in hryvnia terms it has decreased by 2.6%, or by UAH 66.5 billion.
