The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has authorized that, for the duration of martial law and for 12 months following its end, timber harvested during sanitary logging be counted toward timber harvesting limits for main-use logging in mature and overmature stands in all forests, except for mountain forests in the Carpathian region, the press service of the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture reported on Thursday.
“The adopted resolution will allow for more efficient use of forest resources under martial law and ensure additional volumes of timber to meet the needs of the economy, communities, and the defense sector. The document strengthens requirements for forest management, biodiversity conservation, and forest restoration. ‘We are establishing clear rules for forest users while ensuring a balance between the state’s economic needs and environmental responsibility,’ the press service quoted Taras Vysotsky, Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture, as saying.
According to the statement, this decision will allow forest users to further meet the timber needs of the economy, the population, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, while enabling state-owned forestry enterprises to increase the supply of marketable timber to the market.
At the same time, if the application of the new mechanism leads to a reduction of 30% or more in the main-use logging quota in mature and overmature stands, a mandatory recalculation of the quotas with a corresponding reduction is provided for. After logging, the forests will be subject to mandatory restoration in accordance with legal requirements.
In addition, the resolution clarifies the requirements for conducting sanitary measures and addressing the consequences of hostilities in forests, defines the specifics of certain types of logging, and introduces a mechanism for correcting technical errors in electronic logging permits.
Oleksiy Sobolev, Minister of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture, announced the government’s decision to amend the rules governing exemptions for conscripts at critical enterprises, one of which requires raising the average wage at the enterprise to nearly 26,000 UAH.
According to him, the changes consist of three main components. “The first is raising the requirements for the average wage level. To confirm the status of a critical enterprise and reserve an employee, the wage must be at least three times the minimum wage, which is currently 25,941 hryvnias, or nearly 26,000 hryvnias. However, this change does not apply to frontline territories, for which the requirement remains at the current level—21,600,” Sobolev said during a televised marathon on Friday.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has appointed Michael Weinstein as an independent member of the supervisory board of the state-owned Sens Bank; from 2019 to 2023, he served as an independent member of the supervisory board of Oschadbank.
According to the bank’s report in the NSSMC’s information disclosure system, the government adopted the relevant decision by an order dated May 20, 2026; Weinstein will take office following approval by the National Bank of Ukraine.
His term on Sens Bank’s supervisory board is set to last until the current board’s term expires on October 3, 2028.
In recent years, Weinstein has also worked in financial institutions in Kazakhstan and the Netherlands.
Since 2019, he has been a member of the advisory committee of limited partners of the Kazakhstan Capital Restructuring Fund (Netherlands). In 2023–2024, Weinstein served as an independent member of the board of directors of JSC “Microfinance Organization OnlineKazFinance” (Solva, Kazakhstan), from 2019 to 2023, he served as an independent director of the Export-Credit Agency of Kazakhstan, and from 2019 to 2022, he was an independent member of the board of directors of JSC “National Management Holding ”KazAgro” (Kazakhstan).
As reported, in early May, the Verkhovna Rada’s Special Committee on Economic Security appealed to the Prime Minister, the Head of the National Bank, and the Minister of Finance with a request to investigate possible external influence on the activities of Sens Bank’s management bodies.
The committee also requested that Nikolai Gladyshenko, chairman of the bank’s supervisory board, and Alexei Stupak, chairman of the management board, be suspended from their duties for the duration of the investigation.
Subsequently, on May 6, Gladyshenko voluntarily stepped down from his duties as chairman of the supervisory board while the circumstances were being investigated, and these duties were assigned to independent board member Peter Novak.
SENS Bank was nationalized in 2023. According to the National Bank, as of April 1, 2025, with assets of 159.22 billion UAH, it ranked 9th among Ukraine’s 58 banks.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has lifted all restrictions on border crossings for all women without exception, regardless of their positions, Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko announced.
“The government is lifting restrictions on border crossings for all women without exception, regardless of their positions in state authorities, local self-government bodies, state-owned enterprises, and courts,” Sviridenko wrote on her Telegram channel.
As previously reported, in early May, the government lifted restrictions on travel abroad for a specific category of female officials. At that time, it was noted that the changes did not apply to the highest-ranking state officials, key heads of state authorities and their deputies, specifically members of the Cabinet of Ministers, the leadership of ministries and central executive bodies, the Office of the President of Ukraine, the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC), the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the National Bank, as well as to members of parliament, judges of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, prosecutors of the Office of the Prosecutor General, and heads of state-owned enterprises and state bodies whose jurisdiction extends throughout the territory of Ukraine.
The US dollar-to-euro exchange rate at the end of 2026 will be $1.16/EUR1; the Cabinet of Ministers approved this updated estimate in the draft amendments to Ukraine’s state budget (No. 15224), whereas it had previously projected it at $1.08/EUR1.
As noted in the explanatory note to the draft, these changes have affected the assessment of the maximum levels of public debt: it will decrease by only UAH 332.2 billion, although financing of the state budget through debt operations will be reduced by UAH 651.5 billion thanks to the attraction of €13.2 billion in new budgetary support from the European Union under the Ukraine Support Loan.
According to the draft, it is proposed to set the public debt ceiling at the end of this year at 10 trillion 145. 6 billion UAH and the ceiling for state-guaranteed debt at 464.6 billion UAH, with budget revenues of 5 trillion 195.9 billion UAH and expenditures of 6 trillion 407.1 billion UAH.
As reported, in the calculations for Ukraine’s 2026 state budget, the government for the first time included a separate indicator for the projected average annual euro-to-hryvnia exchange rate—49.4 UAH/EUR1—in addition to the traditional average annual dollar exchange rate, which the Cabinet of Ministers expects to be 45.7 UAH/$1 this year.
In recent years, the share of euro-denominated obligations in Ukraine’s national debt has grown significantly, as the EU has become Ukraine’s main donor, while financial support from the U.S. has declined.
Public and state-guaranteed debt for the first quarter of 2026 increased by 190.4 billion UAH, or 2.1%, to 9.233 trillion UAH, but decreased by $2.5 billion, or 1.2%, to $210.8 billion in dollar terms.
The share of debt in euros as of the end of March this year was 44.08%, while in dollars it was 22.74%, in hryvnia 20.94%, and in IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 9.12%.
In its updated April Inflation Report, the National Bank of Ukraine projects an average annual dollar-to-euro exchange rate of $1.18/EUR1, which corresponds to the current rate, compared to $1.13/EUR1 in 2025.
The official hryvnia-to-dollar exchange rate currently stands at 43.8033 UAH/$1, and the hryvnia-to-euro rate at 51.5433 UAH/$1.
The Cabinet of Ministers has allocated an additional 7.7 billion hryvnias to fund housing programs for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from temporarily occupied territories, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced.
“6.6 billion hryvnias for ‘e-Recovery’ for IDPs from temporarily occupied territories. These funds will provide housing for over 3,300 families who have combatant status or are persons with disabilities resulting from the war,” Svyrydenko wrote on her Telegram channel.
She noted that the state provides housing vouchers worth 2 million hryvnias per person or family whose homes remain in the temporarily occupied territory.
Another 1.1 billion hryvnias has been allocated for the construction of social rental housing.
“It will be provided to Mariupol residents who lost their homes due to the war. Housing will be available to 505 families of displaced persons from Mariupol,” she added.
