<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/03/20220301_130212-1-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-15905"/><figcaption>This group of Moroccan pharmacy students have all waited at the Tysa crossing for between two and four days. They are waiting for the Moroccan embassy to organize bus transport across the vehicle-only checkpoint. March 1, 2022. (Max Hunder)</figcaption></figure>



TYSA, Ukraine – Upon arrival at the Tysa border checkpoint between Ukraine and Hungary, one is struck by the shortness of the vehicle queue.&nbsp;



Fewer than a hundred cars stand in line, a sharp contrast to the 30-kilometer queues at <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/ukraine-opens-2-more-refugee-crossings-into-poland/">some crossings</a> into Poland.



However, to the side of the road stand two dozen international students, going nowhere.



Most of the foreigners came here for an inexpensive education at a European university, but are now left fleeing for their lives as the Russian army indiscriminately bombs Ukrainian cities in its attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government.&nbsp;



Nor, one of Ukraine’s 76,000 foreign students, studied in the southern city of Zaporizhia, which lies in the path of Russia's advance in southern Ukraine.&nbsp;



“I have been here nearly four days, and I am still waiting,” 23-year old pharmacy student Nor, who is from Morocco, told the Kyiv Independent.



The problem Nor and his friends face is frustratingly bureaucratic: The students arrived at Tysa, located near the town of Chop in western Zakarpattia Oblast, by train. They attempted to cross on foot, only to be told that the crossing point is for vehicles only.&nbsp;



“They (the border guards) tell me: you must wait for your embassy to pick you up on buses," Nor said. "We are waiting for days and still nothing.”



Bureaucratic nightmare



For some students, like fellow Moroccan Amin, the problems with bureaucracy started even earlier.&nbsp;



“Our embassies told us to leave (before the invasion started), but our university hadn’t given us all our (immigration) documents yet, so we had to stay,” he said.



The group of young men all studied pharmacy at either Kharkiv’s Karazin State University or Zaporizhia National University, and are all from Morocco. There are nearly 9,000 Moroccans studying in Ukraine, a phenomenon dating back to Soviet-era educational exchanges.&nbsp;



They drink tea and eat cheese sandwiches distributed by the Red Cross as they narrate their journeys to the border, wondering when they can finally cross to the other side.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/03/20220301_131136-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-15920" width="840" height="630"/><figcaption>Red Cross tent at the Tysa border crossing on March 1, 2022. (Max Hunder) </figcaption></figure>



“It was chaos, people were pushing each other, men weren’t allowed onto the train, it was a catastrophe,” Amin told the Kyiv Independent.



“There are a lot of students stuck in Zaporizhia right now. They’re being attacked by Russia, they are scared, and nobody is helping them,” interjects Usama, his voice dripping with feeling.



The students at the border say their journeys here were unimpeded. None were denied boarding onto trains due to their nationality or ethnicity.



Recently, stories have emerged in international media that foreign nationals, especially ethnic minorities, were being discriminated against at other crossing points as they were trying to flee Ukraine. Nigerian Rachel Onyegbule told CNN that non-Ukrainians, including women, were denied boarding on cross-border buses and had to walk for hours instead.



Several Moroccan nationals told the Kyiv Independent that, while trying to cross into Poland at Shehiny crossing point in Lviv Oblast, they were repeatedly told to go to the back of the passport control queue. Their crossing took three days.&nbsp;



Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko denied any discrimination was taking place.



"There is no discrimination by race or nationality, certainly not when foreign nationals are crossing the border," he said.



New hopes



Nothing about Tysa indicates the practical impossibility of crossing on foot. Several passport control booths stand idle most of the time, as cars wait in line to be checked by customs officers.&nbsp;



The crossing point to Slovakia at Uzhorod, 25 kilometers north, has temporarily opened to foot traffic, but nobody told the students. They spend their nights sleeping on the cold tiles of an indoor waiting area, the sort of place one wouldn’t want to sit for more than an hour or two.



Egyptian Ahmed Nasr, 20, and Turkish Nina Kimyonşen, 22, are medical students at Kharkiv’s Karazin National University, one of the most prestigious in Ukraine. There are 5,000 foreign students at the university, and no formal evacuation was organized for them until March 2.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/03/20220301_125306-1-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-15915" width="840" height="630"/><figcaption>Ahmed Nasr and Nina Kimyonşen sit at the Tysa border crossing in Zakarpattia Oblast on March 1, 2022. (Max Hunder) </figcaption></figure>



The day they spoke to the Kyiv Independent, missiles hit the university as Russian forces closed in on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with a population of 1.4 million. Devastating footage emerged of the economics faculty badly damaged and burning.



Ahmed Nasr and Nina Kimyonşen sit at the Tysa border crossing in Zakarpattia Oblast on March 1, 2022.



Nina had been told to wait for help from the Turkish Embassy, but she and Ahmed decided to get out two days into the invasion.



“We said, OK, maybe we can wait for two days more (for the embassy), but then we left by train because it was too dangerous. Now, two days later, our home is bombed,” said Ahmed. “I barely had a chance to discover Ukraine, and now that I lost it, I feel empty.”



“Our families are worried about us. They want to see us, they thought we were going to die,” Nina added.



Ahmed and Nina, who had been at the border for three hours, were then approached by a local man who offered to put them on a train across the border. However, Ahmed later told the Kyiv Independent that the train wasn’t running.&nbsp;



The two students had to get a taxi to another checkpoint to cross into Hungary on foot, at which point they were given some food and driven to Budapest, where they are now.



Ahmed and Nina were both anxious about the future of their education when at the border, but they seemed more positive the next day when they were across the border.



“Now they told us we are allowed to go anywhere in Europe and find universities easily,” Ahmed wrote from Budapest.

TYSA, Ukraine – Upon arrival at the Tysa border checkpoint between Ukraine and Hungary, one is struck by the shortness of the vehicle queue.&nbsp;Fewer than a hundred cars...

As their universities are shelled, fleeing foreign students wait days at borders

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/02/photo_2022-02-28-19.59.56-e1646071457703-1024x663.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-14955"/><figcaption>Ukrainian and Russian delegations meet for the first round of negotiations on the Belarusian border on Feb. 28, 2022 after five days of heavy fighting since Russia launched an all-out war on Ukraine. (Pravda Gerashchenko/Telegram)</figcaption></figure>



After five brutal days of fighting, the first round of talks between Ukraine and Russia ended inconclusively.



Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration, said that a number of core themes had been identified, and that the delegations would go back to their capitals for further discussion. The discussion mainly focused on stopping the fighting.



Negotiations were held on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border near the Prypyat River.&nbsp;



Podoliak said that the two sides would hold a second round of talks at the earliest possible opportunity.



"At (these talks), the themes (discussed today) will be concretely developed," he said.



Podolyak then tweeted that while it did not impose any ultimatums, the Russian side "unfortunately still has a non-objective understanding of the destruction it has caused."



According to the Ukrainian government, the war has cost 352 Ukrainian lives and approximately 5,300 Russian ones. Russia only acknowledged taking casualties four days into the war, and has thus far refused to give any numbers.



The Ukrainian side was represented by Podoliak, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, ruling party leader David Arakhamia, Deputy Foreign Minister Mykola Tochytskyi, diplomat Andriy Kostin, and lawmaker Rustem Umerov.&nbsp;



Russia was represented by Presidential Advisor Vladimir Medinsky, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, and Russian ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov.



Ukraine went into talks demanding an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine.



Podolyak said on Feb. 27 that Russia was seeking to force Ukraine into an “unacceptable compromise” with its all-out assault on Ukraine.



Zelensky said previously that he did not believe the negotiations would yield a positive outcome, but that talks would go ahead so that “no citizen of Ukraine doubts that I, as president, tried to stop the war when there was still a chance, however small.”



Despite an overwhelming manpower and equipment advantage, Russia’s five-day assault has been marked by tactical failures. Multiple videos have shown Russian tanks and APCs abandoned by roadsides after they ran out of fuel, and many attacks have been beaten back by Ukrainian forces.



According to Bellingcat, Russia has started using cluster munitions in Kharkiv. Cluster bombs are prohibited by a treaty ratified by 110 countries, of which Russia is not one. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also facing domestic opposition to the war after several thousand protestors came out onto the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg despite totalitarian anti-demonstration laws. Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska have also publicly called for peace.



Russia has also been pressured by Western sanctions, namely the closure of EU, U.K., and Canadian airspace to all Russian-registered aircraft, and EU plans to throw several large Russian banks off SWIFT, the global payment order system.&nbsp;



The Russian ruble is 30% down today despite intervention from Russia's Central Bank, and analysts fear a possible run on the banks.



Day that changed everything



Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began just after 4:45 a.m. Kyiv time on Feb. 24, when Putin announced a “special operation” to “disarm and de-Nazify” Ukraine. This was immediately followed by cruise missile strikes on major Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, and multi-directional assaults towards Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, and Mariupol.



The outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, have turned into a major combat zone, with Ukraine’s government claiming to have destroyed 100 Russian vehicles yesterday in the satellite town of Bucha.&nbsp;



Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that nine civilians and 18 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the city since fighting began, and 106 civilians and soldiers were injured.



The assault was prefaced with an escalation of shelling by Russia and its proxies from the occupied Donbas territories over the previous week. Putin then announced he was recognizing the occupied regions as independent states on Feb. 21. The Russian Parliament officially approved the decision the next day.



U.S. and U.K. intelligence had been warning of an imminent attack since late November 2021. However, Zelensky continued to downplay the threat up until as late as Jan. 28, accusing Western leaders of spreading “panic.” Ukraine did not begin to mobilize its reserves until Feb. 23, the day before the invasion.



However, since the beginning of an all-out offensive, Zelensky has received plenty of plaudits for his wartime leadership. The president, who is still in Kyiv, responded to a U.S. offer to evacuate him by publicly stating “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo.”&nbsp;



According to a new poll by the Rating Group, Zelensky has a 91% approval rating, an unprecedented number for a Ukrainian leader.&nbsp;

After five brutal days of fighting, the first round of talks between Ukraine and Russia ended inconclusively.Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration, said...

First round of Ukraine-Russia negotiations inconclusive as casualties pile up

Kyiv City administration issues warning about painted markings on rooves.

Ukraine's military succesfully defending the area near Chernihiv.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2021/12/landfall-facilities-in-russia-in-september-2021_small_rgb-1024x682.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-4439"/><figcaption>Landfall pipes of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in Russia on Sept. 23, 2021. (Nord Stream 2 / Nikolai Ryutin)</figcaption></figure>



German economy minister Robert Habeck has ordered the country's energy regulator to halt the certification of the <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/why-nord-stream-2-is-centerpiece-of-ukraine-crisis-with-russia-explainer/">Nord Stream 2</a> pipeline in response to Russia's military escalation in eastern Ukraine, Spiegel reports.



The decision comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/breaking-russia-recognizes-occupied-regions-in-ukraine-as-independent-states/">recognized</a> occupied Ukrainian territories in Donbas as independent states, and <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/putin-sends-troops-in-kremlin-occupied-donbas/">began to move</a> regular Russian troops into them.



According to Spiegel, Habeck sent a letter on Tuesday to the Federal Network Agency ordering it to withdraw a positive certificate for the controversial undersea pipeline, which analysts say empowers Russia to act more aggressively in Ukraine. The project is an extension of the already operating Nord Stream pipeline.



If switched on, the new pipeline would allow Russia to send 55 more billion cubic meters of gas under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine. This would deprive Ukraine of up to $2 billion a year in transit payments and a major deterrent against further Russian incursion.



Construction of the 1200-kilometer undersea pipeline was completed in September, but the pipeline was awaiting approval from the Federal Network Agency since then.

German economy minister Robert Habeck has ordered the country's energy regulator to halt the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in response to Russia's military escalation in...

BREAKING: German economy minister orders Nord Stream 2 certification halt

Zelensky to consider severing diplomatic relations with Russia.

Ukraine calls for "harsh sanctions" against Russia for recognizing occupied territories as independent states.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/02/shkarlet-3-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-11327"/><figcaption>A student smashes an ice heart decorated with a picture of Education Minister Serhiy Shkarlet on Feb. 14, 2022. Kyiv-Mohyla Academy students want Shkarlet fired over his interference in their election of a college president on Feb. 2, 2022. (Daria Maliuha / Spudeyskyi Visnyk)</figcaption></figure>



“Kyiv-Mohyla (Academy) has always been an independent university. It has always defended its position.”



Andrii Latsyba, a second-year law student at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, says these words with a calm, unwavering determination.



He is one of the leaders of a several hundred-strong student strike movement at Ukraine’s oldest university, ongoing for two weeks and sparked by what those taking part see as an attempt by the education ministry to erode the university’s autonomy.



The conflict stems from the academy’s long-running attempt to elect a new president, which has been fruitless after two years and five elections.&nbsp;



The last attempt at an election on Jan. 27 was marked by an incident where one box was vandalized and another temporarily stolen and returned with unclear motives.



The university’s electoral commission nevertheless ruled the election legitimate, but on Feb. 2 the Ministry of Education ordered a rerun. The next day, the ministry canceled its order after a public outcry which prompted an intervention from the speaker of parliament and the prime minister.



Students say they won’t stop protesting until election winner Serhiy Kvit is appointed, and education minister Serhiy Shkarlet is out of his job. Shkarlet has a reason to begrudge Kvit, the man who headed up a commission in 2020 which found Shkarlet guilty of academic plagiarism.



Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal fuelled further speculation on Feb. 18 by failing to directly answer a question from an opposition lawmaker on whether Shkarlet would be fired.



Illegal order



The current conflict arose after Kyiv-Mohyla’s fifth attempt in two years to elect a college president, a position which has been vacant since 2019.



The institution’s lack of a permanent head paralyzes the university’s ability to make long-term decisions, according to Serhii Firak, editor of Spudeyskyi Visnyk, Kyiv-Mohyla’s main student newspaper.



“The university needs a leader who can present a vision and begin to deal with problems on all fronts,” Firak said.



Four attempts to elect one failed to yield a majority for any candidate. The fifth attempt was held in January, with the run-off vote between Serhiy Kvit and Oleksandra Humenna taking place on Jan 27.



During the vote, five masked perpetrators burst into the voting hall, poured zelenka, a common disinfectant which dyes anything it touches green, into one ballot box, and stole another before returning it.



The identity or motives of the perpetrators have not yet been established by the ongoing police investigation.



The university’s electoral commission subsequently conducted an investigation. They found that the box seals weren’t broken, and that number of ballots matched the quantity given out. They, therefore, decided to certify the election.



However, on Feb. 2, the Ministry of Education intervened. They issued an order which declared the election void and demanded a rerun in March.&nbsp;



This provoked outrage among students and wider civil society, who condemned the action as illegal. One of those voices was Kyiv School of Economics professor Yegor Stadnyi, who also served as Deputy Minister of Education in 2019-2020.



Ukrainian law stipulates that if a candidate for college president wins over 50% of the vote in an election, the education ministry must sign a contract with them. The ministry has no right to annul a certified election.



“This is far from the first time the ministry has broken the law,” Stadnyi told the Kyiv Independent.



“However, this incident gained such attention that the outrage wave went far beyond the Ministry of Education.”



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/02/shkarlet-4-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-11328"/><figcaption> Kyiv-Mohyla Academy students protest outside the President's Office on Feb. 14, 2022. (Daria Maliuha / Spudeyskyi Visnyk)</figcaption></figure>



Ruslan Hrabovskyi, head of Kyiv-Mohyla’s student council, told the Kyiv Independent that on Feb. 1, the day before the education ministry’s order, he was summoned to a private meeting with Sharklet to discuss the election.



“I told him he had no right (to annul the election). He replied that he was the minister, that he didn’t care about anybody else’s opinion, and that he would do it.”



Hrabovskyi says Shkarlet told him: “You can either spend two months on (another) election, or two years going through the courts.”



The Ministry of Education did not respond to a request for comment.



The day after the order was issued, an emergency meeting was held between university representatives including Hrabovskyi, Shkarlet, Parliamentary Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, among others. The result was a cancellation of the Feb. 2 order, and an agreement to respect the election results.



“Stefanchuk argued that the ministry had no right to interfere in the autonomy of universities,” Hrabovskyi said.



“Because of this, Stefanchuk and Shmyhal forced Shkarlet to cancel his order,” he added.



Plagiarism scandal



The retraction of the education ministry’s order did not satisfy the students, who decided to press the advantage and go ahead with the protest anyway.&nbsp;



“(The government) really doesn't want student protests right now, which is exactly why we’re protesting,” quipped Latsyba, referring to the government’s desire to avoid negative headlines after several recent scandals.



Several student protests have been held, with the last one taking place outside the President’s Office on Feb. 14.&nbsp;



They say they won’t be persuaded to back down until Kvit’s new contract is signed, and Shkarlet is out of his job.



Students and civil society figures have several reasons to be unhappy with the education minister, who was appointed to the job temporarily in June 2020, then permanently in December 2020. He has been accused of stalling education reforms, however, one core theme stands out in students’ protest banners: “Shkarlet – plagiarist.”



In September 2020, when Shkarlet was already serving as acting education minister, the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance, headed up by Kvit, found him guilty of three counts of plagiarism. Shkarlet later successfully appealed the decision in court.



Media outlets published excerpts of his academic work with entire paragraphs identical to those published by other academics years before.



Shkarlet’s confirmation as education minister elicited nationwide student protests, arguing that a plagiarist was not fit to uphold academic standards. Many have still not forgiven this.



Kvit, in addition to having already served as Kyiv-Mohyla’s president from 2007 to 2014, was also minister of education between 2014 and 2016, under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, Volodymyr Zelensky’s predecessor.&nbsp;



This affiliation to the previous president, who is currently on trial for treason while being the most popular opposition politician in Ukraine, may also be a factor in the ministry’s apparent unwillingness to appoint Kvit.







<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/02/shkarlet-5-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-11329"/><figcaption>Kyiv-Mohyla Academy students protest outside the President's Office on Feb. 14, 2022. (Daria Maliuha / Spudeyskyi Visnyk)</figcaption></figure>



Wider failings



Anger at Shkarlet, however, runs deeper than just the plagiarism scandal.



Ex-deputy minister Stadnyi expressed his frustration with the stagnation of meaningful education reforms under the current management.&nbsp;



“Even progress on projects which were started before Shkarlet’s tenure is extremely slow,” Stadnyi said.



He highlights the example of the $200 million loan for education spending secured from the World Bank in May – according to Stadnyi, negotiations should have been concluded “several months earlier.” The ex-deputy minister also said that the New Ukrainian School project, much trumpeted during its launch in 2019, has gone nowhere.



The New Ukrainian School is an initiative that seeks to modernize Ukraine’s Soviet-era school policies. The core concept of the reform is to base students’ learning around core “competencies,” such as the ability to be a lifelong learner, IT proficiency, and financial literacy.



However, the effort has petered out of late. On Feb. 18, prime minister Shmyhal fielded questions in parliament from opposition Voice party lawmaker Inna Sovsun, who wanted to know why the New Ukrainian School reform had “collapsed.”



According to an October survey conducted by the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, less than 10% of Ukrainians consider their education system to be of high quality, and only 35% believe that a good education can be accessed by anyone.



Students across Ukraine frequently cite antiquated curricula, suffocating red tape, and lack of resources as the main problems in Ukrainian higher education.



According to Stadnyi, the situation won’t improve anytime soon, as the ministry is too busy waging political vendettas and responding to self-inflicted scandals like the Kyiv-Mohyla election.



The former official also thinks that the current furore won’t be the end of Shkarlet’s tenure, as he believes the government does not have a potential replacement lined up to fill his role.



However, the prime minister’s Feb. 18 remarks to parliament were notable for the absence of any concrete assurances that Shkarlet would be kept in the job, opening up an uncertain future and the potential for another victory for Kyiv-Mohyla’s striking students.

“Kyiv-Mohyla (Academy) has always been an independent university. It has always defended its position.”Andrii Latsyba, a second-year law student at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, says these words with a...

Kyiv-Mohyla students seek to oust education minister over independence clash

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/02/GettyImages-1238006609-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-10764"/><figcaption>Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks during a meeting with the lawmakers of the State of Duma, Russia's lower chamber of parliament in Moscow, Russia on Jan. 26, 2022. (Russian Foreign Ministry)</figcaption></figure>



Russia’s parliament voted on Feb. 15 to ask President Vladimir Putin to recognize Russian-occupied territories in Donbas as independent states. 



Altogether, 351 of 450 lawmakers voted for the bill, which was tabled by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. 



Since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin has been insisting that the Russian-led militants in the region are independent of Moscow.



The proposal will now be submitted for Putin's approval. He is unlikely to accept it, as such a move would effectively void the Minsk peace agreements signed with Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.



Read More: <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/yermak-travels-to-paris-meets-normandy-format-advisors-amid-russian-escalation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yermak travels to Paris, meets Normandy Format advisors amid Russian escalation</a>



Russia has repeatedly demanded that the Donbas peace process be conducted through the Minsk accords. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of stalling the peace process, largely due to the unclear wording of certain points in the Minsk documents.



Russia has previously demanded a "special status" for the regions it had occupied, while Ukraine had been previously clear that it won't provide additional powers to a region that isn't currently controlled by Kyiv.



On Feb. 14, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz focused on the <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/national/scholz-warns-moscow-of-wide-reaching-consequences-stays-silent-on-nord-stream-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Minsk Agreements</a>, saying that President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to present a plan to introduce “special status” for occupied Donbas.



The talks came after Zelensky's meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Feb. 7 in which the French president said he was seeking “a path to de-escalation,” and said he scheduled the meeting so “everyone’s intentions can be clarified.”



Altogether, the leaders of the Normandy Format countries – Ukraine, France, Germany, and Russia – have not met since 2019. The Normandy Format and the so-called Trilateral Contact Group are the two set of talks launched in 2014 to find a peaceful solution to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.



Both seek to implement the Minsk Agreements signed after a Russian military offensive in February 2015. Russia’s ongoing eight-year-long war has killed over 13,000 people.

Russia’s parliament voted on Feb. 15 to ask President Vladimir Putin to recognize Russian-occupied territories in Donbas as independent states. Altogether, 351 of 450 lawmakers voted for the...

Russian parliament votes to recognize Donbas militant ‘republics’

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2021/12/history-text-banner-2-1-1024x640.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-5433"/><figcaption>Ukraine International Airlines plane at the Boryspil International Airport in Kyiv. (flyuia.com)</figcaption></figure>



Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry announced a $590 million fund to insure aircraft flying through the country’s airspace, amid reports that global insurers were suspending coverage due to the threat of a large–scale Russian attack.



The money will be taken from the state budget and placed on an escrow account, to be used for “guaranteeing the safety of flights through Ukraine for insurance companies, reinsurers, leasing companies and airlines.”



Interfax reported earlier that British reinsurance giant Lloyd’s of London notified all Ukrainian aviation insurers on Feb. 12 of their intention to halt all war insurance provision over Ukraine.



A London-based insurance source told the Kyiv Independent that “if Lloyd’s won't write (the policy) at all, then there’s little chance anything will run.”



Meanwhile, Andriy Guck, a partner at Kyiv-based law firm Ante, wrote on Facebook that it was not yet certain whether insurers and lessors would accept the Ukrainian government’s financial assurances.



“We will see tomorrow,” he wrote.



The suspension of insurance cover would have effectively halted nearly all international air travel to and from Ukraine, including Ukrainian carriers, the vast majority of whose planes are leased from foreign companies.



Ukrainian airline SkyUp had to reroute a Feb. 12 Madeira-Kyiv flight to Chisinau, Moldova, as the plane’s Irish-registered lessor refused to let it enter Ukrainian airspace. SkyUp has since stopped selling tickets for flights between Feb. 14-16.



Dutch flag-carrier KLM also halted all flights to Ukraine on Feb. 12.



Al leaked U.S. intelligence report published by German newspaper Der Spiegel put the likely date of a further Russian invasion at Feb. 16, while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Feb. 11 that a further incursion could come “at any time.”



Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky downplayed reports of an imminent invasion on Feb. 12, saying that media reports were “only provoking panic and not helping us.”

Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry announced a $590 million fund to insure aircraft flying through the country’s airspace, amid reports that global insurers were suspending coverage due to the threat...

Ukrainian government puts up $590 million in aircraft insurance to keep air traffic going amid war threat

Max Hunder is a business reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He previously worked as a business reporter at the Kyiv Post focusing on infrastructure and energy. He is a graduate of Eton College and University College London, and has reported for international publications from London, Kyiv and Yerevan.

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Max Hunder