SWEDEN AT A GLANCE

Location: Northern Europe, between Finland and Norway
Government type: constitutional monarchy.
Head of government: prime-minister John Fredrik Reinfeldt
Population: 9 million
Capital: Stockholm
GDP (purchasing power parity): $354.7 billion
GDP - per capita (PPP): $39,100

Swedish globally known businesses:
Ericsson, Electrolux, and IKEA, Volvo, Scania, Tetra Pak, H&M.

Ukraine-Sweden bilateral relations:
Yaroslav the Wise, a prominent Kyivan Rus prince in 11th century, married Ingegerd, a Swedish princess, whose relics are kept today in St. Sofia’s Cathedral in Kyiv.
Ukraine has a small community of ethnic Swedes that live in a village in Kherson oblast since the 18th century.
Kyiv is just a two-hour flight from Stockholm.
Over 100 companies with Swedish capital are registered in Ukraine.
Most known Swedish businesses in Ukraine: Ericsson, Chumak, Oriflame, SEB Bank, Swedbank, Tetra Pak, Skania, SKF.
IKEA, world’s biggest furniture retailer, abandoned investment plans in Ukraine in 2011, allegedly due to unfriendly business environment.
Swedish investment: $1.8 billion
Investment areas: financial sector, manufacture of home appliances, processing of food and agricultural products, packaging, metalworking and engineering goods.

Bilateral trade: $560 million in 2010, Swedish exports comprise 80 percent.

Swedish exports to Ukraine: telecommunications equipment, medical instruments, passenger cars, trucks and buses, manufacturing machinery, heating & cooling, paper and board semi-manufactures.

Ukraine’s exports to Sweden: semi-manufactured products, food products, raw materials, fuels and chemicals.
(Sources: CIS World Fact book, Swedish Trade Council, embassy of Sweden in Ukraine)

Swedish ties to nation are as ancient as Kyivan Rus

June 16, 2011 (Kyiv Post) Diplomatic, political, cultural and economic relations between Sweden and Ukraine date back more than 1,000 years, to the times of the medieval Kyivan Rus empire.

Back then, the nations’ paths crossed on the trade route, which ran from the Vikings in the north to Byzantinum in the south.
In the early 18th century, Ukraine’s hetman Ivan Mazepa struck an alliance with a Swedish king in a bid to gain Ukrainian independence from the Russian Empire and Poland. The endeavor failed when the Russian czar beat the Swedish army in the famous Battle of Poltava in 1709.
Recent history is more cheerful. The 150 or so Swedes who live in Ukraine are mostly involved in businesses. They include successful agricultural start-ups such as Chumak, a food processing business started by two Swedes, two Swedish banks and the Tetra Pak packaging giant. Swedish investment in Ukraine amounts to $1.8 billion, according to the Swedish Trade Council, making Sweden the nation’s sixth biggest investor. Another landmark is the year 1893, when communications giant Ericsson installed a telephone station in Kyiv and then another in Kharkiv. “Sweden was adapting the new communication technologies very early,” said Olle Tholander, general director of Ericsson in Ukraine, who has previously worked in Japan and England. Chased out by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Ericsson did not return until 1995. The company now employs 190 people. “One of the key assets of Ukraine is the high level technical education provided by its main universities. We want to attract these competent and skilled persons,” Tholander said. Paradoxically enough, Ukraine – which has many information technology specialists working abroad or providing outsourced work – is lagging behind in telecommunications. Ukraine is one of the last European countries to spread 3G – or third-generation – technologies widely, making Internet speeds slower than they need to be.
Currently, the only 3G license belongs to Ukrtelecom, the former state telecommunications monopoly, which was sold to Austria’s Epic for a below-market price in what many called an “uncompetitive tender.” While Ericsson looks for more “technological freedom,” SEB Bank, part of the Stockholm-headquartered SEB group that arrived in 2005, seeks clearer regulations and stronger rule of law. “In the crisis, banking showed its weak side,” said Kristian Andersson, deputy chairman of the board at SEB Bank in Ukraine. In Ukraine, the bank mostly specializes in servicing corporate customers from Scandinavia and Germany. Andersson also has “great hopes that a free trade agreement will be signed with the European Union in the near future.”
The agreement is expected to boost Ukraine’s international trade in general and with Sweden in particular. Those bilateral figures aren’t high – only $260 million in 2010, with Swedish exports making up the bulk of the numbers.

Natural disaster examined Poltava communal services

Heavy thunderstorm and squall hit Poltava on June12, 2011. Many big trees have been uprooted and blocked city roads. It took a few days to cut them up and take out. A few damaged roofs have been repared within a few days. Municipal sewage lines faced some minor problems too because of low spillway capacity. Many buildings have been cut of electricity.

Ukraine, NATO complete first stage of project on disposal of ammunition

KYIV, June 14, 2011 (UKRINFORM). Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have successfully completed the first stage a project of the Trust Fund of NATO's Partnership for Peace program on the disposal of conventional ammunition, small arms and light weapons, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Omelyanchuk has said. He said that with the help of the NATO Trust Fund, 15,000 tons of surplus ammunition, 400,000 units of small arms and light weapons, as well as 1,000 man-portable air defense systems, had been disposed of in Ukraine since 2006. The Trust Fund allocated EUR 10.8 million for this stage of the project.
"These joint actions by Ukraine, NATO and its partners are a significant contribution to the nonproliferation of weapons in the world," Omelyanchuk said.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft, as a representative of a leading state in the framework of the project, in turn, said he hoped that the Ukrainian government would soon take a positive decision and sign an agreement on the second stage of the project. The Trust Fund's contribution for the second stage will be about EUR 25 million. At this stage it is planned to dispose of 76,000 tons of ammunition, 366,000 units of small arms and 3 million antipersonnel mines. The project of the Trust Fund of NATO's Partnership for Peace program is aimed at demilitarizing 133,000 tons of ammunition and 1.5 million units of small arms and light weapons in Ukraine within 12 years in four stages. The project was launched at Ukraine's request.

The Lower Dnieper Offensive took place in 1943 during the Second World War. It was one of the largest Second World War operations, involving almost 4,000,000 troops on both sides and stretching on a 1400 kilometer long front. During this four-month operation, the eastern bank of the Dnieper was recovered from German forces by five of the Red Army's Fronts, which conducted several river assault crossings to establish several bridgeheads on the western bank. Subsequently, Kiev was liberated in a separate offensive. To secure such a large-scale crossing a few dummy springboards for attack have been created by the Red Army on the eastern bank of the Dniper River. They had to distract the German forces from main springboards. One of such dummy springboard has been located close to the village of Keliberda located 100 km. away from Poltava. Four Red Army divisions deployed there incurred extremely heavy losses. About 30000 soldiers and officers have been killed there. Not long ago a new monument in commemoration of those who payed with their lives for the liberation of Kiev has been unveiled on the bank of the Dniper River.

Ukraine-Russia Fairway of Peace 2011 naval exercise starts in Sevastopol

KYIV, May 23, 2011 (UKRINFORM). The opening ceremony of the Ukrainian-Russian naval exercise Fairway of Peace 2011 was held in Sevastopol (southern Ukraine) Monday, the press service of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine reported. During the exercise, the navies of Ukraine and Russia will work out joint actions during peacekeeping operations in crisis areas. The exercise involves 9 battleships, 8 boats and auxiliary vessels, 8 planes, 3 helicopters, 260 marines of Ukraine's Navy and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, as well as aircraft of the Sevastopol tactical aviation brigade of Ukraine Air Force.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has approved of the admission of units of the armed forces of foreign states to the territory of Ukraine for participation in multinational military exercises in 2011. According to the law foreign troops are allowed into Ukraine to participate in the US-Ukrainian exercises "Rapid Trident 2011" and "Sea Breeze 2011," the Ukrainian-Russian military exercise "Fairway of Peace 2011," the Ukrainian-Polish-US military exercise "Safe Sky 2011," Ukrainian-Romanian exercises, Ukrainian-Belarusian-Russian exercises, Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Belarusian exercises with the involvement of air defense forces, the "Black Sea Rotational Force 2011" multinational exercise, the "Jackal Stone 2011" multinational exercise, the "Barrier 2011" multinational exercise, and the "Cossack Steppe 2011" multinational exercise. Troops from the following countries are expected to participate in various exercises in Ukraine in 2011: Russia, the United States, Poland, Belarus, Romania, Canada, Moldova, Serbia, Great Britain, Hungary, France, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Norway.
http://www.ukrinform.ua/eng/order/?id=221756

German soldiers burial place found in Ternopil region

KYIV, May 14, 2011 (UKRINFORM).
On the outskirts of the village Oliev (Ternopil region, west of Ukraine), the graves of twenty-five German soldiers have been identified. They were found by representatives of the German people's union for the care of war graves, the district council reported. The search lasted for almost fifteen years, until the village head of Oliev saw on the military picture the outskirts of his native village, where there was the burial place.


In the war times, a front line ran there, and all the gravestone crosses were razed to the ground during the fighting. Now, personal tokens of German soldiers have been discovered at the burial site, as well as bottles with notes bearing names, dates, places of birth, information about families. The remains of the German soldiers were moved to the village of Potelychi (Zhovkva district of Lviv region), where the dead Germans are buried.