Page 14 - UKRRptSept21

association has signed a 1-year, $1.2mn contract with US law firm Arent Fox for legal and lobbying help in Washington. The US Department of Justice reports that the Ukrainian Federation of Employers of the Oil and Gas Industry signed the contract last month. German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets with President Putin in Moscow on Friday, then flies to Kyiv on Sunday to meet President Zelenskiy.
Through 2035, Ukraine is rebuilding its Navy – naval bases, corvettes and small submarines, President Zelenskiy told Ukrainian journalists from Crimea yesterday. “The first will be built in Berdyansk,” he said, referring to Naval Base East. The EU, UK and US are supporting this project, he said. During the March 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russian forces seized about 80% of Ukraine’s large navy boats.
Ukraine on August 19 bought the RSS James Clark Ross, a British polar supply and research vessel, for its only Antarctic outpost, the Akademik Vernadskiy station. The $5.3mn contract with the British Antarctic Survey provides Kyiv with its first icebreaker in the polar region in decades, according to Ukraine’s National Antarctic Scientific centre.
As part of a part of a £1.25bn UK-Ukraine agreement to upgrade Ukraine’s navy, Britain will transfer to Ukraine two Sandown-class minehunting ships, reports the Royal Navy. “Once further work is completed on the two vessels, they’ll be transferred to the Ukrainian Navy,” the statement said. The two minehunters, the Ramsey and the Blyth, have served for 20 years on NATO duties in northern European and Mediterranean waters. The class of ship also is used by the navies of Estonia and Saudi Arabia. Belgium is to transfer the Belgica, a 35-year-old maritime research vessel, to Ukraine free of charge. With Belgian and EU aid, the re-flagged vessel is to start this fall to monitor Black Sea fish stocks and hydrogen sulfide levels.
British warship builder Babcock International is to help rebuild Ukraine’s shipyards, train navy personnel and build fast attack boats, according to a defence News report on a memorandum signed recently in Odesa. Babcock chief executive David Lockwood said in Odesa that the program includes the “enhancement of capabilities on existing naval platforms, the delivery of new platforms, including fast attack missile craft, a modern frigate capability, shipborne armaments and the training of naval personnel.”
Next year, the US will start transferring Mark VI high-speed combat boats to Ukraine next year, President Zelensky says. “In Pivdennyi Port, an infrastructure for basing patrol boats is formed, the management of the division of ships was deployed, and two boats of Island type are based,” he said. “At least three boats that are currently being upgraded in the United States.”
The central bank expects a coronavirus outbreak in the autumn, a contagion that “will delay the recovery of economic activity to the level it was before the pandemic,” Serhiy Nikolaichuk, a deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, tells Forbes Ukraine. Noting the minor impacts of two quarantines in the first half of this year, he said: “At the same time, we do not expect the introduction of strict quarantine measures and significant losses for the economy.”
President Biden has appointed close former adviser Amos Hochstein as a State Department energy envoy charged with implementing a
14 UKRAINE Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com