The possibility of submitting documents for the contest for the post of the new head of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine (BES) has been closed, the head of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy, Danylo Hetmantsev, has said.
“I do not see the whole list of applicants, but I know that there are worthy among them. I am very glad that veterans and military men applied. People who sacrificed their lives for the country will be able to defend its interests in the rear,” Getmantsev noted in his telegram channel on Saturday.
As his first deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak added, more than 40 applications were submitted for the contest, but the final results will be made public on Monday, January 27.
According to him, the next steps will be to check the compliance of submitted documents and six stages of the competition, including: testing of general skills, testing for knowledge of legislation, practical tasks, assessment of personal competencies, testing for integrity, as well as the final interview.
Up to 60 candidates with the highest scores will be admitted to the stage of general skills testing, while fewer applicants – up to 40 – will be able to pass practical tasks. Up to 20 candidates with the highest scores will be admitted to the final interview.
“Compare this approach in our law, to the profanation of how the OP usually in a couple of hours appoints their loyalists to positions they learn about from the news,” – summarized Zheleznyak.
As reported, on October 4, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the composition of the commission on the competition for the position of Director of the BEB, which included: Deputy Chief Academic Secretary – Head of the Department of Strategic Development of the National Academy of Legal Sciences Oleg Hilyaka, Professor of the Department of Financial and Tax Law of the State Tax University Tatyana Matzelik, Head of the Department of Criminal Law of the National Law University named after Yaroslav the Wise Yuri Ponomarenko.
In addition, the commission on proposals from international and foreign organizations included: founder and executive director of the Foundation for Integrity and Asylum, founder and executive director/senior consultant of The Wasserstrorri Group James Wasserstrom, head of the Lithuanian Police Liaison Office at the European Police Force, corruption prevention expert of the EU4IBMResilience project, Donatas Malaskevicius, founder and executive director of the Expert Forum (EFOR), an international expert on the prevention of corruption in Ukraine.
This competition is held within the framework of the Law No. 10439 adopted by the Rada on June 29, 2024 on the reset of the Office, which provides for a competitive selection of the new director with the participation of experts delegated by international partners, as well as certification of the Office’s employees within one year after the appointment of the new director.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has suspended programs that allowed immigrants to temporarily settle in the United States, including a key initiative that provides entry for Ukrainians, The New York Times reported on Friday.
“The directive, contained in an email sent by a senior U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official on Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, calls for an immediate halt to ‘final decisions’ on applications related to these programs while the administration reviews them and decides whether to terminate them,” The New York Times writes.
The affected programs include the “Unite for Ukraine” initiative, a Biden-era initiative that allowed Ukrainian immigrants to temporarily enter the United States if they had financial sponsors. According to the government, as of September 2023, more than 150,000 Ukrainians had entered under this program.
Metinvest Group’s Kametstal plant, which was built at the facilities of Dnipro Metallurgical Plant (DMK, Kamenskoye, Dnipro Oblast), put a T-8 power transformer into operation at the DRZ-10 substation, the main consumer of which is the BOF shop, after a major overhaul in December.
According to the press release, a systematic approach to the renewal of electrical equipment is an effective component of the stable operation of the main production equipment. The power engineers of the Grids and Substations Shop carried out an overhaul and implemented an investment project under the 2024 Program aimed at improving the reliability of the steelmaking process.
The full range of repair measures made it possible to restore all electrical characteristics of the transformer and ensure its stable and uninterrupted operation during the overhaul period. The service life of the equipment has been extended.
An important investment project was also implemented at the filter-compensating device substation – FCD-35 kV, which is consumed by the out-of-furnace steel treatment section of the BOF Shop, namely two ladle furnaces. Its main task was to modernize the switchgear cells with improved insulation characteristics, which largely determine the trouble-free operation of electrical equipment.
“Kametstal was created on the basis of PJSC Dneprovsky Coke and Chemical Plant (DKKhZ) and Centralized Steel Works of PJSC Dneprovsky Metallurgical Plant (DMK).
According to the 2020 report of Metinvest Group’s parent company, Metinvest B.V. (Netherlands) owned 100% of the shares in DCCP.
On January 23, the Berlin Gemäldegalerie hosted the grand opening of the exhibition “From Odesa to Berlin. European painting of the XVI-XIX centuries”. The exhibition includes 60 paintings from the collection of the Odesa Museum of Western and Oriental Art, as well as works from Berlin collections.
The ceremony was attended by Federal President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine Mykola Tochytskyi, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, State Minister Claudia Roth, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Hermann Partzinger, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Germany Oleksiy Makeev.
In his speech,Frank-Walter Steinmeier emphasized that the exhibition demonstrates that Russia’s bloody war of aggression is also a war against Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian identity. At the same time, the exhibition emphasizes the courage and determination of Ukrainians in protecting their cultural heritage.
The German President emphasized the importance of the exhibits from the museum in Odesa, which were saved from Russian attacks and brought to Berlin. He called for continued support for Ukraine in its struggle for its culture and expressed hope for the paintings’ speedy return to independent Ukraine.
In turn, Mykola Tochytskyi expressed his gratitude to the German partners for supporting joint efforts to protect Ukraine’s cultural identity. He emphasized that Ukrainian culture is an integral part of European culture. At the same time, the patronage of the exhibition of masterpieces from the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art is an important practical step in developing a cultural dialogue between Ukrainians and Germans.
“Joint cultural events help the German audience to get to know Ukrainian culture better, to see its vulnerability in the face of Russian aggression and to understand why it is so important to protect it,” the Minister emphasized. “Russians can destroy a museum and a building, but they cannot erase cultural memory. The barbaric attack on Ukrainian culture is an attack on Europe.”
As a reminder, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the staff of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odesa evacuated the most valuable paintings to a safe place. In September 2023, 74 works of art were delivered to the German capital, and in February 2024, about a dozen paintings became part of an exhibition at an art gallery in Berlin. Now visitors will have the opportunity to see another 60 paintings from the Odesa museum. Among them are works by Francesco Granacci, a representative of the Florentine school, Rulant Saverey, a master of etching and an outstanding artist from the golden age of Dutch painting, as well as the German landscape painter Andreas Achenbach.
Exhibition “From Odesa to Berlin” opens in Berlin under the patronage of the President of GermanyThe project is implemented under the patronage of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier and with the support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media Claudia Roth.
Theexhibition at the Berlin Art Gallery will run until June 22, 2025.
On January 31, Kyiv will host Grain Storage Forum, the largest agricultural forum in Ukraine dedicated to storage, processing, logistics and trading of agricultural products.
Organizers: Ukrainian Grain Association, PU “Millers of Ukraine”, Association of Elevators of Ukraine, Bioenergy Association of Ukraine, Agro Marketing Agency, Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, ProAgro Group.
Venue: 16a Parkova Road, Kyiv, CEC “Parkovy”.
The purpose of the forum isto analyze the current state of the industry, identify key problems, develop solutions for stable operation and increase the efficiency of agricultural production, processing, trading and logistics in wartime.
The forum will include:
– 4 conferences:
– Ukrainian Grain Conference
– Conference “Agro-processing: financing and investments”
– Conference “Agro-energy security and agro-energy efficiency”
– Conference “Grain storage and drying”
– Presentation seminars from market leaders;
– Speeches by leading industry experts with cases of effective agribusiness, government officials and experts;
– Exhibition of technological solutions and equipment from leading manufacturers;
– Lounge area, area for business communication;
– Coffee breaks, receptions, live music.
For more information, please visit the official website: https://grain-forum-elevator.com
For partnership and participation in the exhibition, please contact the organizers: +38 096 899 4272 | +38 067 243 3803 | proagro-inform@ukr.net
After a short period of stability, selling prices for potatoes in Ukraine have started to grow again, analysts of the EastFruit project report. The main reason for another rise in prices in this segment, according to experts, was a general reduction in the supply of potatoes in local farms. The fact is that many Ukrainian producers, who do not have capacity for long-term storage, finished selling potatoes in the first half of the current season.
This situation has already affected prices, which since the beginning of this week have risen to 20-30 UAH/kg ($ 0.48-0.71/kg), which is on average 12% higher than at the end of the last working week. It should be noted that representatives of wholesale companies complain about the lack of necessary volumes of quality potatoes in local farms. Farmers, in turn, attribute potato quality problems to unfavorable weather conditions during the harvesting period: prolonged rains had a negative impact not only on the marketable form of potatoes, but also on their storability. Also, according to producers, in 2024, many of them used planting material not of the highest quality.
Prices for potatoes in Ukraine today on average 16% higher than at the end of January last year. Moreover, many market players believe that in the near future the rate of appreciation of these products will noticeably accelerate, “fueled” by information about a possible shortage of quality potatoes in the Ukrainian market.
You can get more detailed information about the development of the potato and other fruit and vegetable products market in Ukraine by subscribing to the analytical weekly EastFruit Ukraine Weekly Pro. Detailed product information is available here.
