Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has proposed creating a transport corridor linking the Greek port of Alexandroupolis with Odessa in Ukraine via Varna in Bulgaria and Constanta in Romania.
“I would like Odessa to be at one end of an ambitious, comprehensive project to develop connections that would start in the port of Alexandroupolis, pass through Varna, Constanta, and finally reach Odessa. This is a project that could be proposed for EU funding,” he said at the 4th Ukraine-South-East Europe Summit in Odessa on Wednesday.
According to the prime minister, the corridor would include transport railways, power lines, and gas pipelines, and it would be a project that “would provide an additional transport corridor for Ukraine, much faster than transporting goods by sea.” He also said that the project would provide “a clear and tangible vision of how Ukraine’s integration into the EU can really change the lives of Ukrainians.”
Mitsotakis also assured that Greece would always be ready to contribute any expert or technical support to bring EU candidates closer to accession.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić arrived in Odessa to participate in the Ukraine-Southeast Europe Summit. This is his first visit to Ukraine in 12 years in office.
The event, organized by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was attended by leaders from 12 countries in the region. After the official talks, Vucic and Zelensky held a private meeting.
During the discussion, they discussed assistance in rebuilding Ukraine after the destruction caused by Russian missile and drone strikes. Vucic also expressed Serbia’s readiness to contribute to the restoration of infrastructure, stressing the importance of restoring regional balance and stability.
Source: https://t.me/relocationrs/1065
Mobile teams from the V.P. Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine have made more than 600 visits to hospitals and perinatal centers over the past four years to diagnose and treat premature newborns, according to Filatova. Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine have made more than 600 visits to hospitals and perinatal centers to diagnose and treat premature newborns, according to Oleg Zadorozhny, senior researcher at the Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine.
“Our specialists have gained a lot of experience by traveling with the appropriate equipment to regional hospitals and perinatal centers to diagnose and treat severely premature babies. Over the past four years, more than 600 visits to hospitals have been made, more than 1,500 premature newborns have been screened, and about 200 telemedicine consultations have been conducted,” he said in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Zadorozhny noted that helping premature newborns with retinopathy in the southern region of Ukraine has become the goal of a joint project with the charity “I Want to See. Southern Region,” under which the Institute has created a Center for the Prevention of Childhood Blindness due to Retinopathy of Prematurity and purchased expensive scientific and clinical equipment.
He added that the Institute’s scientists represent Ukraine in global research on the evaluation of the results of treatment of retinopathy of prematurity in Europe and worldwide as part of international research groups (FIREFLEYE next Study Group and European ROP registry), which are engaged in the study, diagnosis, and development of modern effective methods for the treatment of retinopathy of prematurity.
Source: https://interfax.com.ua/news/interview/1071616.html?utm_source=telegram
As part of a partnership project with OKKO Group, Agrotrade Agricultural Holding shipped 24.4 thousand tons of rapeseed by sea from Odesa to Ghent (Belgium), the press service of the agricultural holding reported on Facebook.
According to the report, half of this cargo – about 12 thousand tons – is grain grown on the fields of the agricultural holding in 2024. The rest of the cargo belongs to OKKO Group.
“This shipment is a big step forward for us, as we used to export small batches of rapeseed by sea – 3-5 thousand tons each. This year, we agreed with OKKO that we would make a partnership project, share the risks and ship the vessel together. This has many advantages, in particular, in terms of saving on ship freight. There were many difficult moments during the shipment, but we successfully dealt with them. In addition, the economy was one of the best this year compared to other sales,” said Andrii But, Director of the Foreign Trade Department of Agrotrade.
At the same time, he noted the high quality of rapeseed grown and sold by the agricultural holding. In particular, the oil content in the grain is 45%, while the basic indicators are usually 40-42%.
Agrotrade Group is a vertically integrated holding company with a full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). It cultivates over 70 thousand hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Its main crops are sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybeans and rapeseed. It has its own network of elevators with a simultaneous storage capacity of 570 thousand tons.
The group also produces hybrid seeds of corn and sunflower, barley, and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of Kolos seed farm (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade launched its own brand Agroseeds on the market.
Vsevolod Kozhemiako is the founder and CEO of Agrotrade.
OKKO Group unites more than 10 diversified businesses in production, trade, construction, insurance, maintenance and other services. The flagship company of the group is Galnaftogaz, which operates one of the largest filling stations in Ukraine under the OKKO brand, with about 400 filling stations.
The group’s founder and ultimate beneficiary is Vitaliy Antonov.
The head of the Odessa regional military administration Oleg Kiper and the commander of the operational strategic grouping of troops “Odessa” jointly signed an order on civilian access to the sea.
“From today, the first open zone is the beach ‘Kaleton’ in Odessa,” Kiper wrote in his Telegram channel on Saturday.
He noted that the list will be supplemented as the inspections are passed.
“We expect to open about 20 beaches in Odessa and the area, as well as one lagoon in the Izmail district,” Kiper said.
At the same time, he reminded that during the air alert, in the detection of suspicious objects, during a storm of 2 points from 2 – the stay of people near the sea is prohibited.
The head of the Odessa regional military administration Oleg Kiper in August 2023 by his order strengthened customs control in the region when exporting agricultural products for export, at the same time on the market of export of agricultural products appeared about 40 companies with signs of fictitiousness, reported hromadske in the investigation “Grain Baron”.
The publication noted that through the ports of Odessa in 2023 passed 85 percent of the country’s agro-exports.
When analyzing the data of the Ukrainian customs, access to which is provided by the international service ImportGenius, journalists found 40 companies with signs of fictitiousness, which entered the agro export market after the Odessa OSA established “manual control” over it.
These companies started exporting grain after August 2023. They have never engaged in exports before, were founded or changed owners in 2023, are not part of well-known agroholdings and do not own land.
“The largest by export volume of these firms has the same phone number as another 139 legal entities. And in second place is a company whose founder is probably a psychologist from Uzbekistan, for whom 20 legal entities have been registered in Ukraine over the past two years,” the investigation said.
“Suspicious” companies for the last quarter of 2023 exported through the ports of the Odessa region about 800 thousand tons of agricultural products worth about $ 150 million, or 6 billion UAH, says the publication and recalls that the head of the Odessa Regional State Administration explained the establishment of manual control by the need to fight against one-day companies and so-called “black exports”.
Such one-day companies export grain and do not return foreign currency proceeds to the country, do not pay taxes, have a fake director and do not have an office. After several transactions with a budget of several million dollars, the company disappears.
The chairman of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Union “Agrarnaya Rada” Dmytro Kohan drew attention to the fact that any manual control has increased risks of corruption.
The Odessa regional military administration refused to comment on the facts revealed by journalists.
