Ukraine will get the funding from German state-owned development bank KfW, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced on Nov. 24.
The money will be allocated to two regional capitals, Zhytomyr and Zaporizhia. Each municipality will have a 2% interest rate on the loan with a grace period of 10 years. The loan also comes with a 1 million euro grant.
The project aims to modernize 1,000 public buildings including schools, kindergartens and healthcare facilities to reduce heat consumption.
Asami Terajima is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent covering Ukrainian military issues, front-line developments, and politics. She is the co-author of the weekly War Notes newsletter. She previously worked as a business reporter for the Kyiv Post focusing on international trade, infrastructure, investment, and energy. Originally from Japan, Terajima moved to Ukraine during childhood and completed her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in the U.S. She is the winner of the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism 2023 (Local Reporter category) and the George Weidenfeld Prize, awarded as part of Germany's Axel Springer Prize 2023. She was also featured in the Media Development Foundation’s “25 under 25: Young and Bold” 2023 list of emerging media makers in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Rome on July 9 and is set to meet with Pope Leo XIV, Suspilne broadcaster reported, citing the presidential spokesperson.
The Kyiv Independent’s Chris York speaks with former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton about U.S. President Donald Trump’s failure to bring peace to Ukraine — and his next steps on Russia's war.
The poll, conducted on July 4 and 5, found that 73% of Ukrainians trust Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who was dismissed as commander-in-chief in February 2024 but continues to command strong public support.
Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers rejected a nominee to lead the economic crimes agency, drawing swift criticism from lawmakers and businesses over alleged interference in the selection process.
Russia launched another mass missile and drone attack overnight on July 9, targeting Ukrainian cities, including in the country's far-west regions located hundreds of kilometers from the front line.
The ruling also found Russia responsible for the deadly downing of Flight MH17, a Malaysian airliner shot down by Russian proxy forces in Ukraine in July 2014.
Ukraine endured the largest aerial attack since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, with at least six civilians killed and 39 injured across multiple regions over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said on July 9.
The operation took place in Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, where the brigade deployed first-person view (FPV) drones and kamikaze ground robotic platforms to attack Russian fortifications, the brigade said in a statement.
According to the SBU, the two individuals, a 24-year-old former student of a Kyiv technical university and his father, were gathering classified documentation with the intent to illegally transfer it to Chinese intelligence.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed to maintain backing for Ukraine "even against the pressure of the political left and the pro-Russian right in this house."
Lithuania and Finland plan to begin domestic anti-personnel mine manufacturing in 2026, with some of the supplies potentially earmarked for Ukraine to counter the Russian threat, Reuters reported on July 9.
Mariia Buhaiova, born in 2007, disappeared on July 4 after leaving a tourist village in Carovigno, a coastal municipality in the Apulia region, where she had been completing an internship.
Yevgeny Primakov, the head of Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia's foreign aid and cultural outreach arm, said Russia's Foreign Ministry is currently drafting legislation that would establish a formal framework for international development efforts.
