The European Investment Bank (EIB) will provide two loans of EUR 50 million and EUR 70 million to state-owned Ukrgasbank (Kyiv) to finance energy independence projects for municipalities and support green growth of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a new EU portfolio guarantee.
“Within the framework of the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC) in Rome, UGB (Ukrgasbank) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced the signing of a multi-component financial package,” the bank said on Thursday.
It is noted that this will allow attracting additional financing for small and medium-sized businesses worth tens of millions of euros and has become one of the first significant results of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025 in Rome.
As part of the package, Ukrgasbank will allocate EUR 50 million to strengthen the energy independence of Ukrainian municipalities. The funds will be used to modernize the district heating infrastructure, develop decentralized heat generation, integrate renewable energy sources and improve energy efficiency of public buildings. The EU grant component will make this funding available to frontline communities.
Another EUR 70 million will be allocated to support the sustainability and green growth of small and medium-sized businesses. These funds will help businesses maintain operations, modernize and implement environmental solutions.
“This financing is further strengthened by a portfolio guarantee from the EU provided by the EIB, which will significantly increase Ukrgasbank’s ability to lend and raise critical capital for the private sector in the amount of more than EUR 31.25 million, even in wartime,” the bank added.
According to the National Bank of Ukraine, in April 2025, Ukrgasbank ranked fifth in terms of total assets (UAH 220.0 billion or 5.9%) among 60 banks operating in the country.
As reported, the European Investment Bank Group and the European Commission announced a new EU financing package of EUR 600 million at the Ukraine Recovery Conference.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to hold a meeting of his team with representatives of the business community on Friday, June 27, to discuss pressing issues.
As it became known to the agency “Interfax-Ukraine”, the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs (UEU), the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine (AmCham) are invited to the meeting, but the international business community Board is not invited.
“I, as the founder of the Board and as chairman of the Coalition of Business Communities for the Modernization of Ukraine, was not invited. In a strange way,” said Andriy Dligach, founder of Advanter Group and the Board community, in a comment to the agency.
Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest telecommunications operator, has announced the launch of its own cloud service for Ukrainian business users – Kyivstar Cloud.
“It is available to small, medium and large businesses, as well as public sector organizations,” the company said in a release on Tuesday.
According to Ilya Poltakov, Kyivstar’s director of new business development, the company sees a strong business demand for affordable solutions and believes that the new platform will enable customers to optimize IT infrastructure costs and scale their business quickly and securely.
According to the release, Kyivstar Cloud can be easily scaled. It has an affordable price, no traffic billing due to local placement, and supports hybrid and multi-cloud models: it can be combined with public and private clouds from different providers, such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services.
It is also noted that Kyivstar Cloud will provide an opportunity to independently create and administer a server, virtual machines, an environment for remote access to programs, host CRM, ERP and other systems, store company data, deploy or test software, etc.
According to the report, Kyivstar Cloud is built on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) edge-to-cloud servers.
“In the future, Kyivstar Cloud can become not only a business service but also a part of nationwide solutions for e-government, medical systems, educational platforms and other digital infrastructure services,” the release says.
“As of March 2025, Kyivstar served about 22.7 million mobile subscribers and more than 1.1 million Home Internet subscribers. The company provides services using a wide range of mobile and fixed technologies, including 4G, Big Data, Cloud solutions, cybersecurity services, digital TV, etc. and has declared investments in new telecom technologies in 2023-2027 of $1 billion.
Kyivstar’s shareholder is the international VEON Group, whose shares are listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (New York).
The relocation of businesses during the war has opened up opportunities for Ukrainian businesses to renew themselves and enter new markets. This was stated by CCIP President Gennady Chyzhykov in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
“We helped entrepreneurs relocate their production, advised them on regulatory conditions, and created channels for partnership. Support for SMEs, the most vulnerable sector, was particularly important,” he said.
Chizhikov added that in regions such as Volyn, programs have been implemented to integrate relocated businesses into the economy, including joint projects with the Czech Republic.
For more details, see the interview at https://interfax.com.ua/news/interview/1069297.html
Ukrainian companies are maintaining their export activity despite military action and internal restrictions. As Gennady Chizhikov said in an exclusive interview with the news agency Interfax-Ukraine, at the end of 2024, exports amounted to 129.2 million tons of goods worth $41 billion.
“Even in wartime, Ukrainian businesses continue to export. This confirms not only their resilience but also their ability to adapt to new global realities,” Chyzhykov said.
According to him, the CCI actively supports businesses in matters of certification, technical regulation, and digitalization of export processes.
For more details, see the interview at https://interfax.com.ua/news/interview/1069297.html
Chinese authorities are considering selling TikTok’s US business to businessman Elon Musk if the short video service fails to challenge a ban on the use of its application in the US, Bloomberg reports, citing informed sources.
The sources emphasize that the Chinese government wants to keep TikTok under the control of its parent company ByteDance Ltd. The appeal against the ban is being considered by the US Supreme Court, but it is likely that the judges will uphold the ban.
Pending the decision, Chinese officials have begun discussing other options for TikTok’s US business. One option involves the participation in the deal of Musk, who is a close supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump. Musk also has a good reputation in China, where the largest plant of his car company Tesla is located.
According to sources, in one of the possible scenarios, control over TikTok’s US operations could go to Company X (formerly Twitter). The number of TikTok users in the US exceeds 170 million, and the acquisition of the service could help X attract advertisers. In addition, Musk has founded a separate company in the field of artificial intelligence, xAI, and it can find application for the huge amount of data generated by TikTok.
Sources note that the discussions are preliminary and no decisions have been made yet. It is also unclear how aware ByteDance is of the Chinese government’s plans, and whether ByteDance, TikTok, and Musk have had any talks about a possible deal.
Elon Musk, ByteDance, and TikTok did not respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment, nor did representatives of China’s Cybersecurity Administration and Ministry of Commerce.
TikTok’s U.S. operations could be valued at $40-50 billion, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts. This is a significant amount of money even for the richest man in the world, and it is unclear how Musk could pay for such a deal. He acquired Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and is still paying off the debt taken out to finance the deal.
Bloomberg also notes that TikTok’s business in the United States is a valuable asset that other players are also claiming. In particular, billionaire Frank McCourt and investor Kevin O’Leary have previously announced their intention to buy the business. Other contenders may include Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. which is TikTok’s longtime partner in the technology sector.
