President of the European Council Charles Michel started his visit to Ukraine on Tuesday morning, Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Matti Maasikas said.
“The President of the European Council has landed in Kharkiv. Two days in Ukraine: visiting the line of contact, honouring the memory of the victims of Maidan, seeing EU COVID-assistance in practice, discussions with [Volodymyr] Zelensky on reforms and association, participation in Ukraine 30 forum on judicial reform,” Maasikas said on Twitter on Tuesday.
President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen recalled the difficulties with the launch of the production of vaccines against COVID-19.
“We all underestimated the difficulty for the industry of ramping up a complex mass vaccine production programme from nothing. I wish I had known that last autumn. I would still have been very pleased about the researchers coming up with the vaccine so much faster than predicted, but I would have warned that it could take several more months before it was available in large quantities,” she said in an interview with Die Zeit on Thursday.
Von der Leyen noted that delays in the terms of vaccinations are due to the EU’s careful approach to the vaccine registration process.
She stressed that at first, manufacturers could not fulfill large orders that were formed by different countries.
“Larger initial orders would have been impossible to honour – even if we had paid out billions extra for this. The current bottlenecks are due to the fact that producing a vaccine is extremely complicated and the start is often shaky. There is a limited supply of raw materials, supply chains for the completely new mRNA technology need to be established and, in addition, demand for these substances from all corners of the globe is extremely high,” Von der Leyen said.
She recalled that in early January, European countries faced a shortage of vaccines, so they increased their orders.
As reported, Minister of Health of Ukraine Maksym Stepanov left for to India to conduct direct negotiations with manufacturers on additional volumes of Oxford/AstraZeneca and NovaVax vaccines in 2021-2022 to the already contracted 12 million doses.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has invited American businessman, founder of the space company SpaceX Elon Musk to visit the Serhiy Korolyov Museum of Cosmonautics, located in Zhytomyr.
“Today is the birthday of the great Ukrainian scientist, rocket engineer and spacecraft designer – Serhiy Korolyov. Indeed, he was one of the very best. I’d like to invite his longtime fan Elon Musk to Ukraine, to see The Serhiy Korolyov Museum of Cosmonautics,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter, commenting on Musk’s message about communicating with Korolyov’s family.
Museum of Cosmonautics named after Korolyov was opened in Zhytomyr in 1970 in the house where the designer spent his childhood. The exhibition presents personal belongings and documents of the Korolyov family, including those provided to the museum by the designer’s mother, wife and daughter, as well as his friends and colleagues.
In 1991, the second part of the museum was opened – the “Cosmos” exposition moved to a special building, which presents a collection of samples of space technology, equipment for cosmonauts, the descent vehicle of the Soyuz-27 spacecraft, an exhibition sample of the Soyuz spacecraft, models of life-size spacecraft and nine milligrams of lunar soil.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said his retest for coronavirus (COVID-19) has so far been positive, and he continues to remain in self-isolation.
“My retest, unfortunately, is still positive, but I continue to work every day. This is my job. The only difference is that I work not on Bankova Street, but on Academician Zabolotny Street [where the Feofaniya clinical hospital is located],” he said in his blog on Wednesday.
Zelensky said he feels better. “The smells are back today. Strength is returning. The temperature is dropping. The desire to return to live work is rising,” he said.
Zelensky expressed the hope that the next video will be recorded from outside the hospital.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba states that the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the United States will develop regardless of who wins the American presidential election.
“My only wish regarding the American elections is that they end as soon as possible, the U.S. president-elect take the oath and we could move on in developing a strategic partnership between our countries, which, I am sure, will develop under any president. The only question is the speed of development,” said the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
He stressed that Ukraine was, is and will be on the sidelines of the U.S. presidential campaign. “We were, are and will be on the sidelines of this campaign. We believe that American democracy is mature enough to make decisions and make choices that are in the interests of the American people,” Kuleba said.
The minister also pointed out that Ukraine’s largest asset in the United States is bipartisan support.
“In fact, there is a clear position of the president, which has been stressed many times, there is a clear position of the Foreign Ministry that Ukraine’s largest asset in the United States is bipartisan support. This is the fundamental principle of our policy towards the United States. The president’s surname or party affiliation does not matter as long as Ukraine is equally supported by both democrats and republicans,” Kuleba added.
Former President of the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) (2008-2018) Eugene Czolij has become the Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Montreal (Canada).
“Congratulations to former President of UWCongress Eugene Czolij as new Honorary Consul of Ukraine in Montreal. Glad to expand our consular presence in Canada,” the Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.
