Poland will provide treatment and rehabilitation for 2,500 wounded Ukrainian soldiers, Vladimir Zelenski said at a press conference after talks with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Kiev on Friday.
“I will separately note the interaction on the treatment and rehabilitation of our soldiers. 2,500 of our military will be able to receive such assistance,” Zielenski said.
According to him, “Poland was with us every minute of this year and will be with us until the joint victory.”
Zelensky reminded that Poland is one of the top partners of Ukraine in defense support. “Poland has become one of the founders of the ‘tank coalition.’ Today we can report the first tanks (received – IF) from Poland,” he said.
The head of state also expressed the hope that “we will be able to overcome the taboo on the ‘air coalition’. This will strengthen the Ukrainian army and security of our airspace”.
The president also said that during the negotiations the simplification of “processes at the border” was discussed. “Supply chains were built across the border. When the war started, these chains gave everything – water, food, weapons, people. Gradually we simplified the procedures to keep our people alive,” he said.
Nova Post Group has launched its first Nova Post branch in Katowice, bringing the total number of Polish cities covered by the branches to nine, the company’s press service said.
“You asked – we did. The nineteenth branch in Katowice, Poland is now open. As in other branches you can send and receive parcels and documents”, – said the company, noting that it will open offices in other cities.
As the release specifies, a total of 18 Nova Post offices have already been opened in Poland – in Lublin, Warsaw, Krakow, Riaszew, Poznan, Gdańsk, Wrocław and Rzeszow.
It was earlier reported that in March Nova Post will enter the second foreign market – Lithuania – and open a branch in Vilnius, Lithuania, to receive and dispatch parcels weighing up to 1,000 kg. Work is also underway to open branches in Germany.
Founded in 2001 Nova Posta is the biggest player in the Ukrainian logistics market: its network consists of about 10 ths offices and 13 ths postal terminals throughout Ukraine. The number of shipments in 2021 exceeded 372 million. Besides, the non-banking financial institution NovaPay provides services for money transfers and operations with electronic money. There were 388 million transactions in 2021.
Detailed results of GC in 2022 have not yet been announced, but its co-founder Leonid Klimov said that at the end of last year, the number of shipments recovered to 95% of the pre-war level.
The group also includes Nova Posta Global, which is developing an international partner network to provide customers with express delivery services not only in Ukraine but also abroad. The company performs regular flights to the U.S., Europe and China and delivered 9.3 million international shipments in 2021.
An overweight street cat named Gacek has become so popular among tourists in the Polish city of Szczecin that he has been given a separate tag on Google Maps marked as a “landmark,” according to Oddity Central.
“A black and white overweight street cat living in the Polish city of Szczecin received a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars based on thousands of reviews on Google search engine and became the most popular tourist attraction in the city. Gacek also got a separate mark on Google Maps,” the portal writes.
As the publication specifies, Gacek has almost 2.6 thousand reviews on Google, more than any other attraction in Szczecin.
As the portal notes, Szczecin is a medieval city in northwestern Poland, where many tourists come to visit the Pomeranian Duke’s Castle and Jan Kasprowicz Park.
“However, all these sights pale in comparison to Gacek, who is also called a cat in a tuxedo because of his coloring. He first became publicly known in 2020 when a local news portal showed the cat in a video that went viral on social media,” writes Oddity Central.
According to a local resident, Gacek first appeared on Kaszubska Street in downtown Szczecin about 10 years ago. The locals liked him, many of whom fed him, so he soon turned from a skinny Gacek into a charming fatty.
Transportation of grains and oilseeds from Ukraine to Poland by rail in 2022 increased by 27 times compared to 2021, Rafal Weber, state secretary of Polish Ministry of Infrastructure, said at the International Conference on Transport Development at European level without specifying the absolute figure.
At the same time, Mustafa Nayem, head of Ukraine’s State Agency for Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Development, who attended the conference, noted that new logistics routes may have emerged over that period.
“The activity of Central European countries was decisive in the first weeks and months of the war, so that new logistic routes could have appeared,” his words were quoted by the press service of the Polish ministry on the website of the department.
Nayem stressed that the situation with the growth of traffic requires mobilization from the Polish side and further integration of transport systems of Ukraine and the EU.
Further intensification of trade flows puts Poland before the need to increase the transshipment capacity of port infrastructure, the capacity of which until recently has been a deterrent to the growth of grain shipments from Ukraine, the conference participants noted.
“Ports have to be too big to handle growing cargo flows. The Port of Gdansk is currently reaching its maximum transshipment capacity. We have to anticipate what will happen and prepare more berths,” Lukasz Greinke, director of the Port of Gdańsk, said at the conference.
Last year Poland’s largest seaports, Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin-Swinoujscie, handled a total of more than 133 million tons of cargo, a record, said Grzegorz Witkowski, deputy minister of infrastructure of the Republic of Poland.
He stressed that the Polish government will continue to implement ambitious projects in Polish ports, so that they can meet the challenges associated with the inclusion of the transport corridor “Baltic Sea – Black Sea – Aegean Sea” in the main Trans-European transport network TEN-T.
Exit and entry movement for vehicles weighing more than 7.5 tons without cargo will be opened from February 13 at the planned “Nijankovychi-Malhovice” checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Polish border, the Western Regional Department of the State Border Service reports on Facebook.
“From 8 a.m. on February 13 … will begin the implementation of the passage operations of cargo vehicles with a maximum weight of more than 7.5 tons, without cargo. The passage of trucks will be carried out around the clock in the direction of departure from Ukraine and on the entrance”, – said the officer of the press service of the Lviv border detachment Oleksandra Kuchkovskaya.
The new checkpoint is expected to unload the existing checkpoints on the border with Poland and speed up cargo and passenger logistics at the border. The point also provides for the movement of cars and the possibility of crossing for pedestrians.
As reported, the project of the mentioned crossing has been frozen since 2007. Work on its development intensified after a full-scale invasion by Russia, when the need to expand the capacity of existing border crossing points and the construction of new ones came to the fore. The construction of the Nijankovichi-Malhowice border crossing point was completed in cooperation with the Polish side under the Open Border project and became possible after the completion of the Nijankovich-Drohobych-Stryj road section, which leads to the border crossing point.
A total of 7 checkpoints for cars operate on the border with Poland: Dorohusk-Yagodin, Hrebenne-Rava-Russkaya, Korcheva-Krakivets, Kroszenko-Smilnytsia, Medyka-Sheginy. Points Zosin-Ustilug and Budomir-Hrushev are designed for crossing by vehicles weighing up to 3.5 tons.
Poland has expanded the use of Ukrainian documents authorizing participation in road traffic. Thus, a driving license issued in Ukraine is considered valid in Poland until December 31, 2023, even if such a license has expired, the Ministry for the reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine reports.
“This became possible after the introduction of amendments to the law “On assistance to citizens of Ukraine in connection with the armed conflict on the territory of this state.” The new norms were adopted in the Republic of Poland on January 13, 2023″, – is indicated in the message of the press service of the Ministry in the telegram channel.
It is also noted that all citizens who have entered the territory of Poland by cars with registration plates of Ukraine and have a certificate of registration of a vehicle, issued in Ukraine, may move freely on the territory of Poland until December 31, 2023 without going to Ukraine.
This applies to all citizens of Ukraine who are legally on the territory of Poland, including those who were on the territory of Poland until February 24, 2022.
