Nuclear waste
Ukraine will stop sending its spent nuclear fuel for storage to Russia as of next year, according to the president of the national atomic energy company Enerhoatom, Petro Kotin. Ukraine's centralised nuclear waste storage is expecting to get the first batch from the Yuzhnoukrayinsk nuclear power plant in May. This would require completing a railway line.
Coronavirus
On the morning of 23 December, the Ukrainian Health Ministry reported 10,136 new Covid-19 cases, 15,372 recoveries and 275 fatalities. The case total has reached 989,642.
The Health Ministry plans to vaccinate 23 million Ukrainians from the coronavirus, which would require around 40 million doses, Chief Sanitarian Officer Viktor Lyashko has told Radio NV.
Donbas
Luhansk separatists have handed Jun Srgt Oleksandr Pupko of the 14th detached mechanised brigade over to the Ukrainian government-controlled territory, the Ukrainian delegation to the trilateral contact group on Donbas has said. He went missing on 17 December and was reported taken captive four days later.
Russia-backed militants have carried out three attacks – near Vodyane, Talakivka and Avdiyivka – since midnight, the Joint Forces HQ has said. Nine ceasefire violations were registered on 22 December.
Huawei
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and several other government offices will uninstall any Huawei hardware it currently has, US Under Secretary of State Keith Krach has said after a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, according to Ukrinform. He added that Ukraine had recently decided to work with US Cisco on the Smart City project, rather than with Huawei.
Russia
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has dismissed as legally negligible the Russian Investigations Committee's resolution pressing the same charges against Ukrainian National Guard member Vitaliy Markiv for which he had been acquitted by an Italian court.
Iran
Although Iran has announced that it has completed its report on the investigation into the 8 January 2020 crash of UIA’s flight PS752 near Tehran, Ukraine has not received any documents yet, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman Oleh Nikolenko has said, as quoted by Hromadske.
Survey
Most Ukrainians (71%) think the country is moving in the wrong direction, a survey by Rating Group has shown. Only 18% think otherwise.
Some 26.5% of Ukrainians would support Volodymyr Zelensky for president and 14.3% would vote for ex-President Petro Poroshenko, were an election held this weekend, according to the survey. Zelenskyy's Servant of the People would get 21.1% of votes among the respondents, pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life would have 17.3%, and European Solidarity would get 15.2%.
Protest
Uranium mine employees in Kirovohrad Region have blocked motorways for three days now, demanding the payment of their wage arrears and the relaunch of the state-owned ore mining mill SkhidGZK. According to trade union leader Mykhaylo Volynets, the welfare of 5,000 families and several mining towns depends on this company's operation.
Roundtable on defence
Exclusive: Gorshenin Institute has hosted a roundtable "An analysis of defence industry reform and the state defence order". The event organised by Gorshenin Institute and StateWatch NGO with the support of LB.ua looked at the progress in defence reform, the reform of the state defence order and the concern Ukroboronprom. Click here to watch the discussion.
Ukroboronprom has already started the process of corporatization, which includes inventorying, preparing and implementing the measures required for the adoption of a relevant law, which will transform the state concern into several holdings, its director-general Yuriy Husyev has said at the roundtable.
Crime
Ecology and Natural Resources Minister Roman Abramovskyy has said that the illegal wood-felling market in Ukraine makes around 30% of the legal one, thus running into 5bn hryvnyas.
Kyiv's Pecherskyy district court has released Air Force Commander Serhiy Drozdov, who is suspected of office negligence over the An-26 air crash near Chuhuyiv, on personal recognisance.