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Liliane Bivings

Business Editor

Liliane is the business editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked at the Kyiv Post as a staff writer covering business news and then as business editor. Liliane holds a master’s degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian affairs with a focus on Ukrainian studies at Columbia University. From 2017-2020 she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, after which she interned with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Liliane is the author of the Ukraine Business Roundup newsletter, which is sent out every Tuesday.

l.bivings@kyivindependent.com
For media & speaking inquiries:
press@kyivindependent.com

Articles

Business

What's a FOP, and why are the IMF and Ukraine fighting over it?

by Liliane Bivings, Luca Léry Moffat
Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared in the Ukraine Business Roundup, our weekly newsletter on what's shaping Ukraine's businesses and economy. Sign up here. After months of failing to pass a range of measures needed to unlock billions in stalled donor funding, Ukraine’s parliament made a small dent in the long list of reforms this week. But there was one piece of regulation conspicuously absent from the agenda. As part of a new $8.1 billion International Monetary Fund loan
Business

Ukraine appoints customs chief to strengthen hand in upcoming IMF talks

by Luca Léry Moffat, Liliane Bivings
Ukraine appointed a new head of the country's customs service, fulfilling a long-delayed commitment to international partners as part of a reform push. Ukraine's Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko approved Orest Mandziy as head of the State Customs Service, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on April 10. Manziy was formerly a detective at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU. The country's customs service is widely seen as one of the most problematic government in
Business

Exclusive: The minerals deal that sparked backlash is now backing Ukraine’s drone edge

by Liliane Bivings, Dominic Culverwell
Just over a year after a dramatic Oval Office clash derailed the now-infamous "minerals deal," the fund it spawned is making its first move, backing Ukraine's defense tech sector as global conflicts intensify. The first of three investments planned this year by the fund — officially known as the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund — will go to Sine Engineering, a Ukrainian dual-use military technology company, two people familiar with the deal told the Kyiv Independent. The deal is exp
Business

This investment fund is betting on Ukraine's struggling farm sector

by Liliane Bivings
Get more news like this directly to your inbox every week by subscribing to our Ukraine Business Roundup newsletter. Russia's full-scale invasion has hit Ukraine's agriculture sector in every conceivable way — from blocked ports and occupied farmland to grain theft, trade disruptions, and direct attacks. But even as the sector struggles, Ukraine has become more dependent on it than ever before. With exports of metals, mining, and other key industries shrinking due to the war, agriculture and a
Ukraine mergers and acquisitions activity, 2013-2025.
Business

Chart of the week: Ukraine’s deal market holds steady despite investor hesitation

by Liliane Bivings
Get more news like this directly to your inbox every week by subscribing to our Ukraine Business Roundup newsletter. Ukraine’s merger & acquisition market has remained active despite international investor caution, with 45 deals worth a disclosed $806 million in the first nine months of 2025, a new report from accounting firm KPMG Ukraine said. The total is an 8% increase in value from last year. Domestic investors drove most of the activity, accounting for 73% of transactions and $442 million
Ukraine

Zelensky's big blunder, explained

by Liliane Bivings, Kateryna Denisova
For many who came to know Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky only after Russia's full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the president's recent move on anti-graft agencies was jarring. In the early days of the invasion, Zelensky gained hero status after refusing to evacuate as Russian forces closed in on Kyiv. His daily addresses and global appeals rallied Western support and helped secure the military and financial aid that have kept Ukraine afloat. To much of the world, Zelensky became the
Business

Exclusive: Ukraine pitches US modernizing its largest oil refinery as part of minerals deal

by Liliane Bivings
Projects Kyiv has submitted to the U.S. for consideration as part of a profit-sharing deal for Ukraine's resources include a shelf and deepwater project and an oil refinery that comes under frequent attack by Russia, Ukraine's Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko told the Kyiv Independent in an interview published on July 7. After months of hard-fought negotiations around the investment agreement — known more widely as the "minerals deal" for its focus on Ukraine's critical minerals — the two sid
Business

‘Neither side wasted time' — Ukraine's economy minister on minerals deal negotiations with Trump’s ‘business-oriented’ administration

by Liliane Bivings, Olga Rudenko
Ukraine's Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko says her task is simple — to get the investment fund behind the closely watched minerals deal with the U.S. off the ground, and prove its detractors wrong. "There are so many criticisms from different parties that this fund is just a piece of paper we can put on the shelves — that it won't be operational," Svyrydenko, who is also Ukraine's first deputy prime minister, tells the Kyiv Independent at Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers on July 4, the morning

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