President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a decree establishing a visa-free regime for citizens of Australia, New Zealand and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Corresponding decree No. 289/2020, dated July 21, was published on the website of the head of the Ukrainian state. It comes into force on the day of its publication.
“To establish, from August 1, 2020, a visa-free regime of entry into Ukraine and transit through the territory of Ukraine for citizens of Australia, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, if their stay in Ukraine does not exceed 90 days during 180 days. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine is to take the measures expiring from this decree,” the text of the document reads.
The Affordable Loans 5-7-9% program will show results in the coming month as small and medium-sized businesses need such loans following the recent lockdown restrictions, Prime Minister of Ukraine Dents Shmyhal has said. “I am sure this program [Affordable Loans 5-7-9%] will show results literally in the coming month and this more than UAH 30 billion is exactly the borrowing base which could be refinanced this year,” he told reporters.
The prime minister also said that the government is ready to continue implementation of this program next year as well.
The Ukrainians are ambivalent about the possibility of granting autonomy within Ukraine to the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions for the purpose of ending hostilities and peaceful conflict settlement in Donbas.
During a nationwide poll by the Social Monitoring Center on July 8-15, 42.7% said they “would support” or were “likely to support” such an autonomy for Donbas, according to the poll’s findings unveiled at an Interfax-Ukraine press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday .
At the same time, 39% would rather “not support” or were “certain not to support” a Donbas autonomy.
On the regional level, the autonomy is seen as a solution by 64.2% in Donbas, 59.2% in the south, 57.3% in the east and 41.6% in the Central Region, and by only 15.7% in the west of Ukraine.
Most in the Western Region (66.9%) said they would “rather not support” or were “certain not to support” a decision to grant Donbas an autonomy. The figures for central, eastern, southern and Donbas regions were 38.2%, 27.2%, 21.9% and 17.5%, respectively. A total of 18.3% were undecided.
Asked whether direct talks with Russia are necessary to attain a peace, 38% said yes, absolutely, 31.6% were inclined to agree and 8.7% were inclined to disagree, and 12.1% said absolutely not. Most of those who said such talks were necessary for peace in the east and Donbas were 50.2% and 46.5%, respectively; in the latter group, 20.7% were respondents in western Ukraine.
The poll entitled “Opinions and views of the Ukrainian population, July 2020,” surveyed 3,035 respondents; margin of error: 1.1-1.9%.
As of July 1, 2020 some 25,600 households installed PV panels and utilize clean electricity.
“In the second quarter of 2020, another 1,500 households switched to PV panels. The total amount invested by families exceeds EUR 520 million, and the total capacity of all PV panels is 658 MW,” the press service of the State Agency for Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving said.
The leaders among the regions in the use of alternative generation are: Dnipropetrovsk – almost 3,500 MW, Ternopil – more than 2,200 MW, Kyiv – more than 2,000 MW, Ivano-Frankivsk – more than 1,900 MW and Zakarpattia – almost 1,600 MW.
Active Group and Expert Club have presented a joint sociological survey at the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency.
The opinion survey covered Ukrainian citizens’ assessment of work of the government and the national police, their attitude to a rise in unemployment and the official statistics on COVID-19 sickness rate, the main issues of concern of urban and rural residents, religion-related problems, etc.
The invited experts – political analyst Serhiy Lozovsky, political expert Valentyn Haidai, political scientist Danylo Bohatyriov, Head of the Active Group sociology company Oleksandr Pozniy – shared their opinions about the results of the survey and commented on the most interesting trends discovered during the poll. The experts came to the conclusion that the ruling party is likely to lose ground, while regional projects will strengthen their positions at the local elections on October 25.
According to the survey, the population in general negatively assesses the work of the central government agencies. Some 38% respondents praised the president’s work and less than 20% said they were positive about work of the prime minister and the Cabinet of Ministers in general. Only 10% of respondents gave a positive assessment of the national police and 22% praised the patrol police (district offices in regions).
Most of the polled Ukrainian citizens are satisfied with the work of local governments: 45% of respondents gave them 4 and 5 points on a scale from one to five.
A total of 33% respondents said that they have experienced changes in their work schedule and employment following the introduction of lockdown restrictions. Some 12.4% switched to remote work, 10.6% left for unpaid vacation, 5% had their work schedule curtailed, 3.1% were laid off, 1.9% left for paid vacation. Meanwhile, 34% of respondents continued to work as regular.
Around 55% of respondents said they did not trust the Health Ministry’s statistics on COVID-19 sickness rate, of them 34.2% said the figures were overstated, 20.5% said the figures were understated. Some 18.6% of those polled fully trust the statistics, 14.9% – trust it partially.
Some 72% respondents said they are religious people (regardless of confession), while 24% said they are atheists.
The main issues of concern mentioned by urban and rural residents include the quality of roads (54%), condition of public spaces (44.7%), condition of domestic infrastructure (43.5%), lack of jobs (34.2%), housing and utility tariffs (31.1%), mass renaming of streets, cities and villages (29.2%).
You can find additional information about the survey on the website of Active Group and on the Expert Club YouTube channel.
The video of the presentation is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttCb81mQqbk
ACTIVEGROUP, EXPERT, EXPERT CLUB, POLL, PUBLIC OPINION, SOCIOLOGY
Transport companies of Ukraine carried 1.21 billion passengers in January-June 2020, which is 43.4% less than in the same period in 2019, the State Statistics Service has reported.
According to its report, the passenger turnover of transport companies for the reporting period amounted to 22.9 billion passenger-kilometers, which is 58.9% less than in the same period last year.
According to the State Statistics Service, 32.1 million passengers used rail transport in January-June (including city train services), which is 58.9% less than in January-June a year earlier, and 513.8 million passengers were transported by road (43.4% less).
Air transport reduced passenger traffic by 67%, to 2 million people.
In addition, according to the State Statistics Service, in the first half of the year, trams were used by 200.9 million passengers (a decrease of 35.8%), metro some 176.6 million (a decrease of 50.3%), trolleybuses 285.1 million people (a decrease of 40.3%).
Passenger transportation by water transport decreased by 93.2% and amounted to about 10,000 people.
According to the State Statistics Service, the figures are given without taking into account the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, Sevastopol and part of the temporarily occupied area of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
