Address by Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal

The great people of Ukraine!

We can say with confidence that the next stage of our liberation war ended in victory for Ukraine. The enemy's plans are ruined. Russia’s terrorist forces have been pushed out of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions.

But the war is far from over. The enemy is constantly trying to seize our lands in the East and South. Continues to launch missile strikes across the country.

Therefore, our task now is to work strenuously to continue to repel the

aggressor.

Those territories that have already been liberated, we will rebuild step by step. We will help everyone who was forced to move and who remained.

As of April 6, more than 500,000 new IDPs have been officially registered in Ukraine. The same number of people have already returned home from abroad.

But millions of Ukrainians still remain in other countries. The Government, together with our diplomats and the Governments of the partner countries, is working to systematize assistance to Ukrainians who have left.

Now we are talking about the need to remove the roaming fee, about social benefits in Diia, the deployment of the Ukrainian educational process, the inclusion of Ukraine in the single European payment area and much more.

We welcome the decisions of the EU countries on the introduction of a temporary protection mechanism. After all, our goal is to return all Ukrainians home.

A separate area of work is cooperation with international organizations in Ukraine. We have already announced a joint program with UNICEF to support large families. I want to emphasize that it will apply not only to internally displaced persons, but to all families in Ukraine. Each member of such a family will be paid UAH 2,000 per month.

What is essential. This cooperation between the Government and UNICEF will be the basis for working with all other donor organizations that want to help Ukraine. We are working to consolidate such assistance in the Diia app.

At present, the Government's focus is also on helping our citizens in the territories that have recently been occupied.

First, in the liberated territories, we are developing the same programs that work for IDPs.

Food, medicine, and basic necessities are also sent to these areas as a matter of priority. We have purchased UAH 4.7 billion worth of food packages, and thousands of them have already been distributed free of charge to our people in frontline and liberated cities.

The second area of work here is the priority reconstruction of liberated cities. The step-by-step plan is ready. The Government authorized Ukrzaliznytsia to order all basic goods for urgent needs, including construction materials, from the state budget. The state will provide the necessary funds for the purchase of windows, doors, beams, boards and other necessary goods for emergency housing reconstruction.

This whole process will definitely take more than a week, so we are currently negotiating with American partners and Ukrainian producers to provide the vacated areas with modular buildings. Temporarily. Many people are left without a roof over their heads, so this is an extremely important task.

Of course, the most important stage of our work is the restoration of critical energy infrastructure. Electricity, water, gas. Work has already begun. Where there was minor damage, light and water have already been restored. Unfortunately, there are cities and villages where this energy infrastructure is almost completely destroyed, so the work will take some time. But it will throw all the necessary forces, including from other regions.

The third point that is worth mentioning today is the Reconstruction Fund of Ukraine. A working group has been set up, which is already actively working in several areas. The first is the seizure of russia's assets in the West and the transfer of these funds to Ukraine. There is simply no single procedure in the world to do this, so we work with each country separately. But we want to receive part of these funds in the next six months to begin to quickly rebuild our country.

We are grateful to our partners who are actively continuing to freeze the accounts and assets of rkssia and oligarchic groups close to the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian people are also grateful for the new package of sanctions imposed by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Australia. We expect that the European Union will make a statement in the coming days.

The sanctions adopted and proposed are strong but not sufficient. Ukraine hopes that the world will impose a strong oil embargo.

Yesterday during the meeting they discussed with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy the issue of imposing an embargo on Ukraine's trade in goods from russia. Ukraine has completely halted import and export operations with the aggressor state since the beginning of the war. In the near future, we will consolidate this with government decisions, so that everyone understands the irreversibility of severing our relations with the aggressor state.

We keep the line! We believe in the Armed Forces! We work for our victory!

Glory to Ukrainians and glory to Ukraine!