Ukraine is willing to partner Nigeria on Infrastructure and Metallurgy- Envoy

Serhii Yushkevych is the Charge d’Affaires of Ukraine to Nigeria. He spoke to Managing Editor, Bonaventure Melah and General Manager, Business Development, Abdulmumin S. Balogun on the safety of Nigerian students and others living in Ukraine, bilateral economic relations as well as Ukraine and Russia.

Tell us about yourself-your family, growing up, career so far and what you like about Nigeria.

I was born in Rivne, Ukraine. I am married and have kids, arrived Nigeria in September 2016 and was appointed the First Secretary for Economic Issues of the Embassy of Ukraine in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

From September 2019 till this time: Charge d’Affairesa.i. of Ukraine to this very important country that plays a key role not only in the region of Western Africa but in the entire African continent and in the world.

Ukraine pays special attention to the development of its relations with Nigeria. Ukraine and Nigeria enjoy a fruitful cooperation. Ukraine considers Nigeria an important partner, especially in the area of trade and investments. In the economic field, Nigeria is already the most important commercial partner of Ukraine in Sub-Sahara Africa.

There are a lot of things I like about Nigeria. Nigerians are very open, friendly and hospitable and always willing to give their best to their guest. I am happy to see that Nigeria is recovering from recession.

What must be applauded and highlighted are the measures initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to ease the hurdles of doing business in Nigeria.

An ambitious policy, launched in October 2016, is paving the way for the reviving of Nigerian local economy. I therefore wish all Nigerians and President Muhammadu Buhari a successful over coming of all challenges that Nigeria faces today, and every success in building a prosperous and peaceful country.

Ukraine’s economy also demonstrates good growing trends of GDP with 3.3% growth in 2018 and 4.1% in the third quarter of 2019. The newly elected President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a public session at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2020, stated that Ukraine should become the leading country in Eastern and Central Europe in attracting foreign investments.

The country has a large domestic market, proven agricultural potential, energy and mineral resources, and a strategic geographic location. This makes it a transit hub and gateway to Europe and Eurasia.

The current government has actively reformed the investment climate. Notably, the country has made significant progress on the investment climate indicators of the World Bank Doing Business Index. Ukraine now ranks 71st out of 190 economies in the 2019 Doing Business report, gaining 4 places compared to the previous report.

We know that President Muhammadu Buhari is doing his best in the areas of agriculture, mining, reconstruction of infrastructure, roads, railways, aviation and ports, and paying attention to electricity.

The presidency also declared agriculture development a priority direction in diversification of Nigeria’s economy that largely depends on oil production and introduced zero rate for import of machinery and equipment for agriculture needs: cultivation of land, harvesting crops, transportation of yield, processing and production of agricultural products, including farming equipment and production of cattle-breeding fodder.

Therefore, industrial and technological assistance of Ukraine to Nigeria can be successfully used for realization of the plans of Nigeria in the energy, infrastructure sectors and in metallurgical industry.

Ukrainian powerful industrial and technological resources and our country’s assistance can be successfully used for realization of large-scale projects in Nigeria.

Our capabilities could help Nigeria to intensify its industrial development, in particular, to expand the electric power generating facilities network, develop the transport infrastructure, including gas transport system, exploration and mining of coal, iron ore, industrial minerals and food-processing industry.

Nigeria and Ukraine have similar problems. In the sphere of security Nigeria has such threats as Boko Haram, while Ukraine suffers from Russian military aggression in the east. We are both making active efforts to improve our economies and fight corruption.

Ukraine has adopted the anti-corruption reform and established a number of anti-corruption bodies, such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

The result of the introduction of these measures aimed at fighting corruption was the improvement of Ukraine’s score in the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index which improved from 25 in 2013 to 30 in 2019.

Ukraine’s position improved from the 144th to 126th out of 180 countries. Of course, there is still a lot to improve, but the mentioned dynamics shows that Ukraine is moving in the right direction.

Many Nigerians are schooling in Ukraine and attesting to the country’s quality educational services. How did you achieve this?

We are satisfied with the present state of cooperation with Nigeria in education, and are ready for further mutually beneficial collaborations in this field. Nigeria ranks fifth in the number of students in Ukraine. Today, more than 3,500 students from Nigeria are studying in Ukrainian universities.

They are hardworking and performing very well. Our governments are both discussing different forms of bilateral cooperation and new formats are being developed.

Finalization and signing of the Intergovernmental Agreement on cooperation in the field of education will give an opportunity to bring people of our countries much closer.

Foreign students are attracted to Ukraine due to a unique combination of high quality education and affordable cost of living compared to other countries. Ukrainians are very open, kind, friendly and hospitable.

There is a very big potential for cooperation in the area of education between our countries and one of the main tasks of the Embassy is to explore this potential to fullest.

Parents of Nigerian students who are in Ukraine or planning to school in Ukraine are worried about the news filtering in from the country; especially regarding unrests and denial of activists and journalists’ rights. What is the assurance that Nigerian citizens living or schooling in Ukraine are not at risk?

Under unrests I presume you mean war in the Eastern Part of Ukraine caused and held by Russia. It was immediately after Ukraine made a clear choice of joining the European Union, EU with the Revolution of Dignity that Russian military aggression against Ukraine began.

Crimean peninsula, the autonomous part of Ukrainian state, and east parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions were roughly occupied by Russian regular troops and its proxies.

Ukraine started an anti-terrorist operation to protect its own territory and initiated at the same time, a diplomatic process to find ways of resolving the conflict under the Minsk Accord (Process).

Unfortunately, Russia is not complying with the Minsk Accord and Russian occupation forces are staying in the East of Ukraine, supporting the terrorist organizations so called “Luhansk People’s Republic” and “Donetsk People’s Republic” (“LNR/DNR”).

Russia is continuing escalation by committing numerous unlawful actions and violations of the international law that demonstrate unreliability of Russia as a partner. Proclaiming peaceful intentions, Moscow continues regularly to supply the Donbas terrorists with weapons and reinforcements.

Continued violation of fundamental norms of international law by Russia is causing disruption of the international security architecture with unpredictable consequences.

Ukraine is able to contain the terrorist threat in the Donbas region, which is orchestrated and supported by Russia. Strictly fulfilling the Minsk Accord requirements, Ukrainian army is successfully countering the on-going Russian troops and Russia-backed illegal armed formations. The country became even more united in reaching the main goal – to get rid of its historical dependence on Russia.

To sum up the above, the security issues exist only in the eastern regions occupied by Russia, while the territory controlled by Ukrainian Government is safe and secured for everybody.

Russia is investing a lot of money and efforts into fake news and dirty propaganda as a part of information war against Ukraine.

Of course, crime exists everywhere: in Ukraine, in Nigeria and in all economically developed countries, but Russian propaganda takes any incident and presents it as a large-scale disaster by falsely magnifying its scale.

Military aggression is just one element of the Russian hybrid warfare against Ukraine. Other elements encompass: propaganda based on lies and falsifications; trade and economic pressure; energy blockade; terror and intimidation of Ukrainian citizens;

cyber-attacks; a strong denial of the very fact of war against Ukraine despite large scope of irrefutable evidence; use of pro-Russian forces and satellite states in its own interests and blaming the other side for its own crimes.

Joint political and diplomatic efforts of the international community constitute a crucial element in countering Russian aggression.

On 27 March 2014 the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution 68/262 “Territorial Integrity of Ukraine” which confirmed the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine and the absence of any legal basis to change the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.

We are grateful to Nigeria for its support of the mentioned UN Resolution and still hope for Nigeria’s firm support of other UN decisions on Ukraine especially on the situation of human rights in Crimea and Sevastopol.