Business news, entrepreneurship and startups in Kyiv region
After February's record low, electric vehicle sales surged 88% in March and 49% in April. The reason is not new buyers, but those who were waiting for the market to adapt to the cancellation of subsidies.
# Ukraine Imported Minimum Gas Volume in April Since December 2024. Behind This Collapse — Not Reduced Demand, But Price Trap and Concerns Ahead of New Heating Season Ukraine imported a minimum volume of gas in April since December 2024. This sharp decline is not driven by reduced demand, but rather stems from a price trap and growing concerns as the new heating season approaches.
Yevhenii Cherkas, who spent twenty years in the workshops and departments of Darnitsa production, took the helm of the company at a moment when it is betting on export expansion and certification in new markets.
# Company Director Suspected of Markup Scheme in Municipal Generator Deal The director of a supplier company, together with two associates, sold generators for treatment facilities to Bila Tserkva city council with a 155% markup — and received a suspicion notice. The scheme was straightforward: three commercial proposals with inflated prices, one tender, and no market verification.
KYMA reports progress in winter preparations: new cogeneration facilities with strike protection and the first diesel complex for water supply. However, the city's own figures show that what has been built is enough to cover only one-sixth of actual demand.
Calbee is switching 14 products to black-and-white packaging starting May 25 — not due to a design trend, but because of oil that cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The chain is simple and alarming.
Byron Allen is paying only $20 million in cash — the remaining $100 million is formalized as a promissory note for five years. For BuzzFeed, this is not a triumph but a rescue from disappearing.
After Iranian strikes on the world's largest LNG hub, Qatar has imposed radio silence for vessels in the anchorage: a security measure that renders a quarter of global LNG traffic invisible.
Since 2022, the network has invested almost 5 billion hryvnias in Ukraine and opened 127 establishments. Sustainable design is the next signal: despite the war, the business is expanding rather than freezing operations.
Ternopil greenhouses, an Odesa workshop and seven suspects — but behind this criminal case lies a systemic problem: illegal tobacco is growing again in 2025, and the state is losing over 24 billion hrn annually.
# Tanker Kunpeng, carrying cargo from the Portovaya plant, drifted at sea for months and disguised documentation to mask Russian cargo – but India refused it anyway. This is the first public signal that fear of secondary sanctions outweighs even energy needs.
# Supreme Court Voids Two Granite Mining Permit Sale Agreements, Returns Asset to State The Supreme Court has ruled null and void two purchase agreements for a special permit to extract granite that belonged to the sanctioned "Unigran" company, transferring the asset to state revenue. This sets a legal precedent blocking the so-called "buffer-buyer" scheme.
Starmer's government is preparing full nationalization of British Steel for the first time in 38 years. Over a year of operational management, taxpayers have already spent £377 million, and the meter keeps running.
On May 21, 2026, SUP DAY FORUM will take place in Ivano-Frankivsk — an event dedicated to stand-up paddleboarding culture and active water recreation.
The price of flagship Russian oil has fallen below $81 per barrel: the discount to Brent has widened to $23.9, rolling back to levels that Moscow wanted to leave behind after the February price spike.
# Kernel investing ~$400 million in renewable energy generation, with new wind farm in Yahidne community part of this portfolio. The question is not whether the wind farm will be built, but rather who will buy this electricity and on what terms.
While the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed and the world has lost nearly a billion barrels of oil, Saudi Aramco has pumped a record 7 million barrels per day through alternative routes — and earned $33.6 billion in quarterly revenue.
The Cabinet of Ministers is launching a free internship program called "Experience Matters" for people over 50. The main barrier is not a lack of experience, but age stereotypes and gaps in digital competencies, which the program aims to address.
Morgan Stanley has calculated that all the factors that have so far held back Brent prices represent borrowed time. If the strait remains closed for several more weeks, the buffer will disappear and the market will shift into a new mode.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigated for two years how state coal went to a private trader instead of state thermal power plants during wartime fuel shortage — but the damage amount turned out to be below the anti-corruption threshold, so the case was taken by a regular district court.
While the Ministry of Development negotiates with Berlin on new supplies, the first real contract — with French Alstom — covers half the need and operates without any acceleration mechanism against attacks.
From February 2026, real estate agents will be required to verify clients when renting properties if the monthly rent exceeds 400,000 hryvnias. The threshold formally existed for years, but the verification mechanism only came into effect now.
# Cabinet adds two new industrial parks to registry in Khmelnytsky and Odesa regions The Cabinet of Ministers has added two new industrial parks to the registry — one in Khmelnytsky region and one in Odesa region. Together they promise 650 jobs and over 535 million hryvnias in investments, but the real bill will not be presented at registration, but when the first factory halts its assembly line.
A contractor failed to perform work since 2024, but instead of having the contract terminated, received another year of deferment—until the prosecutor's office intervened in the matter.
The first resident has started operations in the VinIndustry industrial park: Smart Line manufactures equipment for powder coating of metal and immediately enters foreign markets — with a capacity of 20 units per month.
Over two years, the agricultural holding completed a full cycle: three vessels in the fleet → one. Rotterdam Pearl V was sold, leaving the tanker Mavka — and the company does not hide that it is ready to get rid of it as well.
The European Commission has cornered Google: the company is willing to ease the demotion of news websites in search results — but only to avoid a billion-dollar fine, rather than admitting wrongdoing.
# State Property Fund Prepares Mechanism to Secure Government Bonds with Agricultural Land The State Property Fund is developing a mechanism whereby government bonds will be backed not by gold or GDP, but by specific hectares of agricultural land and rental payments from farmers. The precedent is modest in scale, but the logic derives from the global financial market.
The Hnizdychiv spirits factory has been idle since 2010, has creditor debts, and occupies eight buildings on nine hectares. Rivne-based agroholdng Tradex Agri, which has already converted a cement plant into a grain elevator, purchased it for 3.7 million hryvnias — less than the cost of a new truck.
In April, OPEC cut production to 20.55 million barrels per day — a 36-year low. Behind this figure stands one narrow point on the map that controls a fifth of the world's oil supply.