Statement by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal at Government session

Dear colleagues, fellow Ukrainians!

We are starting a regular meeting of the Government.

Today, weather challenges have been added to the challenges of a full-scale war. Ukraine has been hit by a powerful cyclone.

A round-the-clock headquarters for road emergencies was set up in advance. It is actively working and consolidating the efforts of all critical services.

More than a thousand vehicles of the Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development and the State Emergency Service are currently involved in responding to the bad weather, thousands of personnel are working and about a thousand heating stations have been deployed.

Our sincere gratitude goes to all police officers, rescuers and road workers who are helping Ukrainians.

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I would like to thank the power engineers and utilities. Even in bad weather, they are repairing networks and have restored electricity to the homes of almost 300,000 Ukrainian families overnight.

These days, our energy system is undergoing another test of strength.

Eight months of an active repair campaign are paying off – there have been no scheduled outages after the latest massive drone attack and during the natural disaster.

According to the Ministry of Energy, generation capacity is sufficient to meet demand. Ukraine can attract assistance from the EU and the situation remains under control.

Nevertheless, we are preparing for all scenarios. We are deploying Invincibility Points as planned. There are about 12,000 of them now, and another 1,500 will be opened if needed.

The energy sector is being restored. The Ukraine Energy Support Fund is being replenished. Together with the announced contributions, it already amounts to some EUR 300 million.

In 2023, we received almost 500 shipments of 6,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for the energy sector. These include generators, transformers, switches, and special equipment.

Thirty-four countries demonstrated solidarity with Ukraine. We are sincerely grateful to them for this.

We also need to implement energy efficiency measures and upgrade our critical infrastructure facilities.

Today, we are approving the concept of a programme to modernise state and municipal heat generating companies. It includes major overhauls, strict metering, improving efficiency and reliability, and creating conditions to attract investment.

We expect that by 2030, 3,000 kilometres of heating networks will be repaired, 35,000 individual heating points will be installed and heat losses will be reduced to 11%.

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We are working to rebuild Ukraine in all priority areas.

In the housing sector, we are implementing the eVidnovlennia programme. The state has paid out more than UAH 1.8 billion to Ukrainians for property damaged by russian terrorists. In total, almost 60,000 applications have been submitted, most of them by residents of the Kharkiv, Kyiv and Mykolaiv regions.

As for the destroyed property, 6,400 applications have been received and nearly 800 housing certificates have been generated. Now this component of the programme is also available to co-owners of property.

We are already preparing for the next recovery conference to be held in Berlin in 2024.

Today we are setting up an organisational preparatory committee for this purpose. The task is not only to attract resources for rapid reconstruction, but also to determine the long-term perspective and to synchronise reconstruction with European integration.

The key question is at whose expense reconstruction will take place. Ukraine’s answer is clear – russia will pay for it.

We expect an effective EU decision on the confiscation of frozen russian assets. Yesterday we had a conversation with the Vice-President of the European Commission Věra Jourová about this and received a positive signal.

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Finally. Last Saturday, Kyiv hosted the international summit “Grain from Ukraine”, which gave a powerful impetus to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s humanitarian initiative.

More than USD 100 million will be allocated by partners to purchase Ukrainian grain for countries in need. In particular, Switzerland will allocate more than EUR 3 million, Austria – EUR 3.8 million, Sweden – an additional EUR 8 million and Lithuania – EUR 2 million.

Together we will feed hundreds of thousands of people and prevent russia from using hunger as a weapon again.

I thank everyone who stands with Ukraine today, who stands with us in defence of the values of democracy, security and a just peace.

We will continue to work to strengthen, to win, to rebuild.

Thank you for your attention! Glory to Ukraine!