At the request of the Ukrainian authorities, Switzerland is providing Ukraine with a batch of equipment for extinguishing fires, cleaning polluted water and clearing rubble, the Federal Council of Switzerland reports.
“The Federal Ministry of Defence, Civil Defense and Sports and the city of Basel provided equipment worth a total of 5.2 million Swiss francs. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, which is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will finance and organize the transport of goods. The first two trucks left today Switzerland,” the statement said.
It is noted that all cargo will be transported by land transport in stages. The first two trucks with four construction vehicles left for Ukraine today. In total, Switzerland will supply 20 construction vehicles, three fire trucks and a smaller vehicle to transport equipment and personnel, two mobile containers for the collection and treatment of contaminated water, and two containers for emergency response, including handling equipment, lighting equipment and generators.
The goods will be handed over to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine after on-site training of specialists conducted by the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit. Then the Ukrainian authorities will transport the equipment to places, including Kharkiv, for restoration and repair work.
Switzerland has allocated CHF2.5 million (about UAH 100 million) to support milk production farms in the war-affected regions – Chernihiv, Kyiv and Sumy regions, the main attention will be paid to the hygiene of the milking process.
The corresponding humanitarian project is being implemented at the request of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine in cooperation with the Association of Milk Producers of Ukraine (AMA), the #SaveUA international charitable foundation and the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, according to the website of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy on Wednesday.
The goal of the project is to ensure food security in the regions by improving the quality and safety of dairy products produced in the country, mainly by monitoring compliance with the hygiene of its production. In particular, the control over the hygiene of the culture of milking animals will avoid failures in the further processing of milk, on the one hand, and outbreaks of diseases among consumers, on the other.
The Ministry clarified that by August 1, 232 dairy farms had already confirmed the need for humanitarian assistance, of which 95 were from Chernihiv, 78 from Kyiv, 59 from Sumy region.
“With the support of Switzerland, interested milk producers in the affected areas will receive products for washing and disinfecting milking equipment, pre- and post-milk treatment, udder hygiene wipes, gloves, reagents for the detection of latent forms of mastitis, disinfectants for livestock buildings, etc. in the amount of their quarterly needs,” the Ministry of Agrarian Policy said in a statement.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, until the completion of the project in November 2022, the supported farms will be able to significantly improve their financial condition by restoring product supply chains. It is also important that the purchase of goods will be carried out from Ukrainian suppliers who operated on the market before the war, which will enable them to continue to provide hygiene products and serve dairy farms in the future.
“On the path to restoring the capacity of the Ukrainian dairy sector, it is important to support production technologies built on high hygiene standards for high-quality and safe food products,” the agency concluded in a statement.
As reported, in June the Swiss government announced its intention to hold consultations for more than 100 dairy farms from the above three areas. The government of the country sent a group of consultants to Ukraine, who provided producers with recommendations in the field of restoring livestock productivity, quality control and safety of raw milk.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is working to protect the interests of Ukrainian citizens located on the territory of the Russian Federation, in particular, citizens illegally taken out of the territories temporarily occupied by the Russian army, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said.
“As you know, there are no Ukrainian diplomatic institutions on the territory of the Russian Federation. On behalf of the President of Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reached an agreement in principle with Switzerland on representing Ukrainian interests on the territory of Russia. The choice in favor of Switzerland was made because of its extensive experience in performing such functions, and we are grateful to the Swiss government for their readiness to provide their good services,” Nikolenko said in a comment published by the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
He noted that the modality of representing the interests of Ukraine in the Russian Federation by Switzerland will be determined by a bilateral agreement. At the same time, according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the receiving party must provide consent for Switzerland to represent Ukraine’s interests in Russia.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, People’s Deputy of the Holos faction, announced that there was a proposal to the President for the appointment of former Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova as Ukraine’s Ambassador to Switzerland, but there is no official information about the decree yet.
“Now there is an ambassador to Switzerland – Irina Venediktova,” Zheleznyak wrote in Telegram on Wednesday.
At the same time, the media, citing Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, report that he signed a submission to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the appointment of Venediktova as ambassador to Switzerland.
Zheleznyak later added in a Telegram that “officially it is still unknown whether the president signed, but there is already a submission from the Foreign Ministry.”
The agency does not currently have official information about the appointment of Venediktova as the head of the diplomatic mission of Ukraine in Switzerland.
Against the background of the war and with the aim of reconstruction, Switzerland will strengthen support for Ukraine, Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said.
“Switzerland will double the funding in the framework of bilateral cooperation with Ukraine to more than 100 million francs by 2023 … Responding to the call of the Prime Minister (Denis Shmyhal), we will allocate at least 15 million francs for digital transformation,” he said at the Conference on the restoration of Ukraine in Lugano on Tuesday.
The President added that Switzerland also allocates funds to Ukraine on a multilateral basis through the UN, the World Bank, the EBRD and other organizations.
Cassis noted that the principles formalized later on Tuesday in the Luhansk Declaration would make it easier for Ukraine to raise funding for the Recovery Plan.
Switzerland will invest in public and private projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in various fields of activity of Ukraine: infrastructure, construction, transport, energy.
The relevant agreements were reached between Minister of the Environment of Switzerland Simonetta Sommaruga and Minister of Environmental Protection of Ukraine Ruslan Strilets during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano (Switzerland).
“We have made the first practical step for Ukraine to introduce market mechanisms of the climate agreement, create new climate financing channels in Ukraine and incentives for green development for Ukrainian business… I am convinced that the agreement between our governments is a good start for the ‘green’ post-war reconstruction of Ukraine and the achievement of climate goals under the Paris Agreement,” the minister said on Facebook on Monday.
Strilets clarified that Ukraine had pledged to provide Switzerland with verified results of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere in return for the investments received.
