Page 12 - UKRRptMay21

Turkey and Ukraine met for a three-hour meeting in Istanbul on April 11
and agreed to speed up reaching an agreement on a free trade pact between the two countries. The cross-Black Sea pact is designed to double bilateral trade to $10bn. To put an end to a decade of official talks, both countries agreed to an ‘audit’ of all problem issues with an eye to signing this year.
The Rada should approve reforms demanded by the IMF by July 2021,
allowing for the resumption of IMF financing in September, Oleh Ustenko, the President's economic adviser, told RBC-Ukraine in an extensive interview. “Amendments will be made to the law on banks and the law on the National Bank, which will increase its independence,” Ustenko said. He warned that it would be costly for the Finance Ministry to go to the Eurobond market without an IMF deal. He said of bond yields: “Without the IMF, it will be 1-2 percentage points higher.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in Turkey on April 11 to meet with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan where defence industry cooperation was discussed on Saturday during a parallel meeting between the Turkish Defence Minister, Hulusi Akar, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Andriy Taran. At the time of Zelenskiy’s last visit to Turkey last October, Vadim Nozdriya, the General Manager of Ukrspetseskport, announced that Ukraine would like to purchase 48 Bayraktar TB2 combat drones. The drones would be jointly produced by Ukraine and Turkey. In 2019, Ukraine bought six Bayraktar TB2 drones, three ground control stations and 200 high-precision missiles from Turkey in a $69mn deal.
In a $1bn deal, the largest for Turkey’s defence industry, Ukraine will purchase four Ada class ‘stealth’ corvettes for patrolling the Black Sea. The first ship is to be built in Turkey and the next three at Mykolaiv’s Okean shipyard, reported the shipyard. The deal was signed last December by Ukrainian defence Minister Taran and Turkey’s top defence procurement official, Ismail Demir.
Zelenskiy introduces sanctions against top Ukrainian smugglers.
President Zelenskiy signed an order on April 4 to introduce personal sanctions against individuals that “can be named as the top-ten Ukrainian smugglers,” the president’s website reported on the same day. The list was agreed upon on April 2 by the National Security and Defense Council based on information provided by the State Security Service. The sanctions were introduced against ten individuals and 79 companies, involving the blocking of their assets and property for three years, Zelenskiy stated. He promised that the fight against smuggling would intensify, adding that smugglers bring about UAH300bn losses to the state budget annually. On April 3, zn.ua newspaper published a list of other ten persons who deserve to be in the top-smugglers list. One of the persons listed by the media “owes a bottle to Shefir” after the ultimate list has been published, zn.ua reported. Serhiy Shefir is a friend and advisor to Ukrainian president.
Biden looks to appoint special envoy to kill Russia-Germany energy pipeline. The administration is vetting Amos Hochstein to negotiate the thorny geopolitics surrounding Nord Stream 2. Then-Vice President Joe Biden, left, talks with then-State Department Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein during the Caribbean Energy Security Summit on Jan. 26, 2015. Amos Hochstein, who served as the special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs under President Barack Obama, was informally
12 UKRAINE Country Report May 2021 www.intellinews.com