LONDON — Joe Biden’s “protectionist” Inflation Reduction Act won’t help the U.S. counter the rise of China and could create a “single point of failure” in key supply chains, Britain’s trade chief Kemi Badenoch warned.
Speaking at a POLITICO event Tuesday night, Badenoch — recently promoted to head up the U.K.’s new Department for Business and Trade — predicted the flagship law would not achieve its key aims, and insisted the U.K. is not sitting on the sidelines in the transatlantic tussle over the plan.
The comments came just minutes after the U.S. ambassador to the U.K. mounted a spirited defense of the IRA at the same event.
The Inflation Reduction Act offers billions in subsidies and tax credits to try and incentivize take-up of electric vehicles and build up green infrastructure. But European and British carmakers are particularly concerned about the impact on their own industries of massive help for U.S. firms.
Speaking on Tuesday night, Badenoch said Britain — which has been lobbying against the plan but is not prepping its own subsidies — is “working very well with a group of like-minded countries who are worried about the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“The EU is very worried and we’re working jointly with them on it,” she said. “It’s not just the EU doing stuff and we’re not in the room. Japan is worried. South Korea is worried. Switzerland is worried.”
Many countries, Badenoch contended, are now “looking at what the U.S. is doing” with concern.
“It is onshoring in a way that could actually create problems with the supply chain for everybody else,” she said.
“And that will not have the impact that it wants to have when it’s looking at the economic challenge that China presents. So no, I don’t think it’s a good idea, not just because it’s protectionist. But it also creates a single point of failure in a different place, when actually what we want is diversification and strengthening of supply chains across the board.”
Speaking earlier Tuesday night, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Jane Hartley argued that the plan could have major positive implications for countries beyond the U.S.
“One of the things I would say is there’s going to be a huge amount of money, R&D — the technology is going to improve, the technology is going to be cheaper,” she said. “The technology is going to be used by everyone in the world — not just the U.S.”
Hartley stressed that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is “looking pretty hard” at the act during its so-called comment period, when U.S. agencies take feedback on a plan. Both President Biden and U.S. Trade Secretary Katherine Tai had, she said, stressed that their country “didn’t do this to hurt our allies — we want to protect our allies.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated Janet Yellen’s job title. She is the treasury secretary.
Tesla, the major player in the electric car industry, is set to open up some of its charging stations to all US electric vehicles for the first time.
Under the new plan, at least 7,500 charging points from Tesla’s Supercharger and Destination Charger networks will be made available to non-Tesla EVs by the end of 2024. This move has the potential to revolutionize the promotion of electric vehicle use, which is a significant component of President Joe Biden’s objective to combat climate change, and opening it to the country’s largest and most reliable charging network could be a game-changer.
“As President Biden said, the great American road trip will be electrified,” said Mitch Landrieu, a White House aide who oversees implementation of the 2021 infrastructure law signed by Biden.
The White House revealed a range of new initiatives on Wednesday, aimed at making EV charging networks more accessible and reliable for Americans, especially for those traveling long distances. These initiatives include introducing new standards that will ensure anyone can use a charging network, regardless of their vehicle or location.
Tesla, General Motors, Pilot, Hertz, EVgo, and several other companies have committed to increasing the number of public charging ports by thousands over the next two years. This expansion will be funded by private funds and federal spending from the infrastructure law, bringing the nation closer to achieving Biden’s EV charging goals.
Tesla is set to install charging stations in public places such as hotels and restaurants, which will be accessible to all EV drivers using the Tesla app or website. Additionally, Tesla has plans to expand its network of Superchargers nationwide by 2030.
The implementation of standards will not only guarantee the effectiveness of the substantial investment in EV charging infrastructure but also foster the creation of high-paying employment opportunities, and ensure that the EV chargers receive quality maintenance through the enforcement of rigorous workforce standards such as the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program (EVITP) and Registered Apprenticeships. As part of the White House Talent Pipeline Challenge, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has already certified 20,000 electricians through the EVITP program.
Part of the new Infrastructure Bill
These measures will aid the US in fulfilling the ambitious targets of the Biden administration to tackle the climate emergency, including constructing a countrywide network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers on American highways and ensuring that EVs make up at least 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030. Furthermore, they will foster an industrial strategy to advance the domestic electric vehicle and charging sector.
Apart from investing around $7 billion in EV battery components, crucial minerals, and materials, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates $10 billion for sustainable transportation and $7.5 billion for EV charging.
Together with several other federal initiatives aimed at supporting domestic manufacturing and establishing a nationwide network of EV charging stations, these flagship programs are a substantial addition to the Inflation Reduction Act’s backing of cutting-edge batteries, fresh and extended tax credits for EV purchases, and funding for the deployment of charging infrastructure.
There’s more bad news for Vladimir Putin. Europe is on course to get through winter with its vital gas storage facilities more than half full, according to a new European Commission assessment seen by POLITICO.
That means despite the Russian leader’s efforts to make Europe freeze by cutting its gas supply, EU economies will survive the coldest months without serious harm — and they look set to start next winter in a strong position to do the same.
A few months ago, there were fears of energy shortages this winter caused by disruptions to Russian pipeline supplies.
But a combination of mild weather, increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a big drop in gas consumption mean that more than 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas is projected to remain in storage by the end of March, according to the Commission analysis.
A senior European Commission official attributed Europe’s success in securing its gas supply to a combination of planning and luck.
“A good part of the success is due to unusually mild weather conditions and to China being out of the market [due to COVID restrictions],” the official said. “But demand reduction, storage policy and infrastructure work helped significantly.”
Ending the winter heating season with such healthy reserves — above 50 percent of the EU’s roughly 100bcm total storage capacity — removes any lingering fears of a gas shortage in the short term. It also eases concerns about Europe’s energy security going into next winter.
The positive figures underlie the more optimistic outlook presented by EU leaders in recent days, with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson saying on Tuesday that Europe had “won the first battle” of the “energy war” with Russia.
EU storage facilities — also vital for winter gas supply in the U.K., where storage options are limited — ended last winter only around 20 percent full. Brussels mandated that they be replenished to 80 percent ahead of this winter, requiring a hugely expensive flurry of LNG purchases by European buyers, to replace volumes of gas lost from Russian pipelines.
The wholesale price of gas rose to record levels during storage filling season — peaking at more than €335 per megawatt hour in August — with dire knock-on effects for household bills, businesses’ energy costs and Europe’s industrial competitiveness.
Gas prices have since fallen to just above €50/Mwh amid easing concerns over supplies. The EU has a new target to fill 90 percent of gas storage again by November 2023 — an effort that will now require less buying of LNG on the international market than it might have done had reserves been more seriously depleted.
“The expected high level of storages at above 50 percent [at] the end of this winter season will be a strong starting point for 2023/24 with less than 40 percent to be filled (against the difficult starting point of around 20 percent in storage at the end of winter season in 2022,” the Commission assessment says.
Analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services think tank said this week that refilling storages this year could still be “as tough a challenge as last year” but predicted that the EU now had “more than enough import capacity to meet the challenge.”
Across the EU, five new floating LNG terminals have been set up — in the Netherlands, Greece, Finland and two in Germany — providing an extra 30bcm of gas import capacity, with more due to come online this year and next.
However, the EU’s ability to refill storages to the new 90 percent target ahead of next winter will likely depend on continued reduction in gas consumption.
Brussels set member states a voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15 percent from August last year. Gas demand actually fell by more than 20 percent between August and December, according to the latest Commission data, partly thanks to efficiency measures but also the consequence of consumers responding to much higher prices by using less energy.
The 15 percent target may need to be extended beyond its expiry date of March 31 to avoid gas demand rebounding as prices fall. EU energy ministers are set to discuss the issue at two forthcoming meetings in February and March.
LOS ANGELES, February 14, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Moonware, a venture-backed California startup, is solving some of the biggest challenges in air travel. With recent news of significant delays due to IT failures and air traffic control issues, Moonware’s technology aims to improve efficiency and reliability in commercial and cargo aviation with intelligent airport systems.
Holiday travel is near pre-pandemic levels, but that has brought a host of new challenges. This year, airlines left thousands of passengers stranded or with missing bags, and thousands of flights were canceled, delayed or diverted. A Christmas blizzard that affected airlines across North America has highlighted the fact that many stakeholders have been slow to invest in upgrading their IT systems, where archaic tools like walkie-talkies and paper are still prevalent.
Moonware comes into the picture at a challenging time for air travel. The company is developing an “airside OS,” HALO, which coordinates the ground crew and equipment responsible for servicing aircraft with tasks such as baggage loading, fueling, cleaning, catering, and more. Optimizing these ground operations helps carriers reduce delays and turnaround times while increasing aircraft utility.
Weather-related issues affect the scheduling of staff needed to operate flights, ranging from pilots and cabin crew to ramp agents and ground handlers who are responsible for servicing aircraft. Moonware’s HALO app “Uber-izes” airport ground logistics, pairing ramp agents with flights through an automated system, which also uses smart routing to help ground crews navigate across the tarmac. Efficiently allocating people and vehicles across the airfield saves time and fuel, cutting emissions and costs.
Real-time data is key in the system’s ability to redistribute staff and assets during last-minute schedule changes, which is absent in existing operations. Today’s legacy scheduling tools lack built-in redundancies for unscheduled changes and setbacks. Systems that account for the complexities in operational disturbances, regardless of weather, seem to be needed more than ever. “Our technology has the potential to revolutionize the way aircraft are serviced and turnarounds are handled, resulting in a more efficient and sustainable airport experience,” says CEO Javier Vidal.
Antiquated scheduling tools were greatly responsible for propagating the effects of the Christmas blizzard, where Moonware is modernizing the ground operations portion of the puzzle. But the company’s plans don’t stop there.
Beyond software, part of the company’s roadmap includes deploying autonomous and electric ground support equipment (GSE) to augment “last-mile” airside tasks. “The biggest advantage of deploying autonomous vehicles in an airport is the controlled environment of operation. When compared to public roads, airfields are simpler to map, where markings on the tarmac and a myriad of signs can serve as built-in navigational cues,” says CTO Saunon Malekshahi.
Moonware is currently working with industry leaders to bring its technology to market, with plans to start testing HALO in the coming months. Its mission is to enable what the company calls the “next-generation of aerial mobility,” with automated and sustainable airfields.
A critical fuel pipeline is expected to be restored Saturday, but not before it prompted panic buying by drivers in Las Vegas. Elise Preston has the details.
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Mumbai, India – Amid the usual traffic snarls on one of central Mumbai’s busiest overpasses, drivers could hardly help but notice a simple, yet large, hand-painted slogan proclaiming that the rapidly rising wealth of businessmen Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani was a miracle of Narendra Modi’s government.
In the city’s stock market, however, Adani’s wealth, which has increased by more than $100bn in less than a decade, was eroding faster than the paint on the slogan could dry. Adani’s self-named conglomerate grew by running a rapidly increasing share of India’s public infrastructure including ports, airports, power plants and coal mines.
However, a recent report by the New York-based activist short-seller Hindenburg Research showed a vast array of offshore entities with ties to the Adani group, which it indicated may have been used to inflate profits, hide losses or blur ownership. The report, titled Adani Group: How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History, said the group was involved in “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”.
The report, which came out on January 24, hit India and stocks of the group’s listed companies like a bombshell, even as they retraced several older trails of regulators’ inquiries that had gone nowhere. The ensuing days wiped more than $110bn of market value off the group’s listed firms and halved Adani’s net worth.
Hindenburg’s report came just as the 200 billion rupees ($2.5bn) follow-on public offer of Adani group’s flagship Adani Enterprises was to open on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The group hit back at the report on the day of the public offer opening, January 27, saying it was an “attack on India”. It put out a 432-page response and scrambled to get the public offering subscribed.
But stock prices for group companies continued to fall and Adani Enterprises said it would scrap the offering, even though it had been fully subscribed and the money returned to investors.
The damage from the report has extended far beyond the Adani group. Its allegations of regulatory failings and questionable corporate governance have been ill-timed for India as it seeks the global centre stage. It recently overtook the United Kingdom as the world’s fifth-largest economy and China as the world’s most populous country. This year, it holds the G20 presidency.
“Investors do worry about the risk of contagion,” says Charlie Robertson, chief economist of Renaissance Capital, an emerging markets investment bank. “That if there is one company like this, could we find more?
In China, for instance, investors kept investing in real estate companies after Evergrande but later, several other companies turned out to be problematic too,” he said referring to the giant Chinese real estate firm that nearly buckled under enormous debt in the last couple of years, with the risk spilling over to several other real estate firms.
While the scale of the conglomerate owned by Adani, whose meteoric rise to being the world’s third-richest person, can be matched by only a few other companies, the episode has left Indian regulators with a lot to answer.
“This questions the credibility of Indian regulators, just as Wirecard was for German regulators,” says Tim Buckley, director at the Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, who has tracked the Adani group’s various businesses for many years. Germany’s finance watchdog was heavily criticised for ignoring early warnings about Wirecard, the digital payments firm that was once the darling of the stock markets but blew up in an accounting scandal in 2020.
Adani’s rise
The 60-year-old Gautam Adani is known for being personally modest as much as for his dazzling ambition and success. After a short stint as a trader in Mumbai’s diamond market, still in his twenties, he returned to his home state of Gujarat and began dabbling in business.
In 2002, months after now Prime Minister Narendra Modi became Gujarat’s chief minister, religious riots broke out in the state, with questions arising over Modi’s and the police’s role in the unrest. Soon after, Modi began hosting large global investor conferences, seeking to burnish his state’s image – and his own – with an investor-friendly shine.
With Adani handling the state’s largest port and several other infrastructure projects, the chief minister became known for getting things done.
But even as his fortunes rose, Adani had some close personal shaves. He had been staying in Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel when armed men attacked it in 2008. Adani narrowly escaped as the attackers battled the Indian police for days, killing residents and staff before being killed themselves.
Years earlier, Adani had also briefly been kidnapped for ransom before escaping – events that may have encouraged him to keep a low profile. He recently admitted to spending most evenings at his home in Ahmedabad, playing cards with his wife, a trained dentist who now runs the group’s charitable work.
Adani is one of seven siblings, several of whom work in the group, as do both his sons Karan and Jeet. Karan is the chief executive of Adani Ports and SEZ and was recently appointed to Maharashtra state’s economic advisory board.
When Modi became prime minister in 2014, he arrived in New Delhi on Adani’s plane. Since then, Adani has expanded successfully into airports, renewable energy, data centres, defence production and real estate among other sectors. Many of the contracts for such infrastructure projects were won through a competitive bidding process.
“India does not seem to be interested in developing a range of regional infrastructure players,” says Rohit Chandra, assistant professor of public policy at IIT Delhi. “This quest for national champions comes at the cost of regional contractors growing and climbing the ladder of project complexity.”
The crisis
Since 2020, until the Hindenburg report, some Adani group stocks had risen to more than 400 times its per share price. It suggested either that shareholders expected earnings to rise sharply or that the share was trading at a price that was too high. Around then, questions began to swirl about the group’s ownership.
While the Adani family owned stakes to as high a threshold as regulators permitted, the report showed that offshore funds – including in Mauritius, Cyprus and the UK – seemed to also own substantial shares in the group’s companies. Elara, Vespera, Cresta, New Leaina, LTS , APMS, Albula, Asia Investment Corporation and Opal among other such funds had few, if any, other investments.
Hindenburg’s analysis showed that much of the funds of these companies were deployed in Adani stocks, suggesting they may be shell companies. The report traced connections between Gautam Adani’s UAE-based brother, Vinod Adani and several of them.
“When you see such a complex network of offshores companies from a company whose operations are mostly in India, the onus is on the company to say why they exist,” said Climate Energy Finance’s Buckley.
The Hindenburg report alleged these funds accounted for up to 47 percent of the volume in Adani group stocks on some days and were possibly used to drive up stock prices.
“Many of the Vinod Adani-associated entities have no obvious signs of operations, including no reported employees, no independent addresses or phone numbers and no meaningful online presence,” the report said. “Despite this, they have collectively moved billions of dollars into Indian Adani publicly listed and private entities, often without required disclosure.”
In its public statement, the Adani group said Vinod was not a related party since he did not hold any official positions in the group. A group spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The recent prospectus for Adani Enterprises’s public offering says the country’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, had asked the group’s publicly-listed companies for ownership and director details in November 2020, and that the companies had provided these details.
In parliament too, the government said such an investigation was under way but the findings, if any, have not been made public.
Fallout for Adani Group
The stock price of Adani Enterprises fell from 3,442 rupees ($41.5) on January 24, when the Hindenburg report came out, to 1,562 rupees ($18.8) within days before recovering to 1,983 rupees ($23.9) on February 8 as the company tried to soothe investor confidence by prepaying more than $1.1bn in bonds. It also announced that some of its pledged shares had been released.
The Adani group has faced sustained campaigns by environmental activists against its coal mining projects in India and Australia [File: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images]
But by then, Credit Suisse, Citigroup and Standard Chartered banks had stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral and ratings agency S&P had downgraded Adani Ports and Adani Electricity to negative.
The downgrade came due to “governance risks and funding challenges for the larger Adani group”, the report said. S&P also removed Adani Enterprises from its Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, raising challenges in getting green funding, a key to its planned move from coal to renewable energy.
The company has faced sustained campaigns by environmental activists against its coal mining projects in India and Australia. They now cite the Hindenburg report to say the related party transactions indicate the walls between its renewable and coal businesses may not be strong enough.
In 2021, the Adani group shifted ownership of the Bowen Rail Company, the coal haulage component of the Adani Carmichael thermal coal project, from Adani Ports to Adani Enterprises “to fulfil Carbon Neutral Commitments”, said Will Van De Pol, a campaigner for Market Forces, an Australian group that lobbies banks to make green investments.
“Asset transfers are being used to obscure connections to the company’s coal expansion plans, highlighting the need for investors to steer clear of the entire Adani group.”
Fallout for regulators
The Adani crisis and its fallout on regulatory agencies and the government is being debated in the Indian parliament. Opposition parties have called for a parliamentary investigation into the group. Investors, too, say it is needed to restore confidence.
“We would like to see a credible investigation by Indian authorities. That is the best way to put Indian and international investor concerns to rest,” says Renaissance Capital’s Charlie Robertson.
So far, the government has not announced new investigations into Adani group stocks and holdings. In a speech in parliament on Wednesday, Modi said that “the 2030s would be India’s decade”, but hardly addressed the Adani stock crash.
“The regulator has to do its own homework and then take action and not just react based on social media,” said JN Gupta, managing director of Stakeholder Empowerment Services, an adviser on corporate governance.
An investigation could also bolster the government’s efforts, through its G20 presidency and outside, to attract both foreign direct investment and investment in its markets.
With China having undergone long COVID lockdowns and a trade war with the United States, India seemed an increasingly attractive destination. A day before the Hindenburg report was released, India’s commerce minister Piyush Goyal said Apple was planning to increase its manufacturing in India, aiming to make up to 25 percent of its phones in the nation, up from the current 5 percent.
But Renaissance Capital’s Robertson says: “Three months ago, there was a lot of investment coming into India and China was looking risky. Today that has changed.”
In India itself, one likely impact of the report could be the slowing down of the slew of infrastructure projects the Adani group has contracts for.
“Delaying, discarding, and rebidding projects are part of the infrastructure development process in most developing countries,” says IIT Delhi’s Chandra. “It is quite likely that the Adani group will consolidate, reprioritise and possibly scale back some of its project ambitions after its losses in the last few weeks.”
That could be the delaying of the Indian dream itself.
NEW YORK, February 9, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Mace, the global consultancy and construction business, has announced the appointment of Priya Jain in a newly created role as President for the Americas, building on recent success and programme wins across the United States, Canada and Peru. Priya will lead a team of expert project delivery consultants, responsible for billions of dollars of programs across the region.
The appointment comes as part of a wider move to drive growth and enhance client service across Mace’s global consultancy and will enable Mace’s experienced teams to leverage best practices and unlock opportunity across North and Latin America.
Priya joins Mace from consultancy firm Atlas, where she served as Chief Growth Officer. Prior to that, she led Atkins’ expansion in North America in the role of Senior Vice President for Sales and Strategy – and before that held senior roles within CH2M. Priya will report to Jason Millett, Mace Consult’s CEO, and will be a key member of the Consult Board.
Mace’s Americas team specialises in corporate real estate and infrastructure consultancy services and supports some of the world’s largest brands – including Tiffany, Northern Trust and Walgreens – and infrastructure clients to transform how they deliver their projects and programs.
Building on the business’ base in the U.S. property sector, and recent major programme wins in Canada, such as the multi-billion-dollar, decade-long Ontario Go Expansion programme, Priya and her team are going to strengthen Mace’s profile in the corporate real estate sector and grow the infrastructure offer across the continent.
She is also going to build on Mace’s exceptional global program and project delivery capability as the organisation expands in Latin America. Following two years of successful delivery by Mace’s team in Peru, including the construction of 74 schools and 15 hospitals, Mace Consult has won a contract extension this year to continue the vital work on Reconstruction with Changes program in 2023 and is targeting expansion into new countries in the region next year.
Outside of her role at Mace, Priya sits on the advisory board for civil engineering for City College New York and has spoken about the importance of inclusion in the industry at events organised by the National Diversity Council and the Tri-State Diversity Council.
Jason Millett, CEO of Consultancy said:
“We are delighted to have Priya at the helm as we enter this next phase of serving our clients even better through expansion and consolidation in the Americas. This appointment is fully aligned with our vision for a global consult business, driving four primary services across our markets and sectors.
“Our growth strategy in the Americas promises great opportunities and results for our clients, our colleagues and everyone who works with us.
“Priya’s proven track record in leading and developing teams and working with private and public sector clients, at both federal and state level, makes her perfectly suited to deliver on these promises.”
Priya Jain, President for the Americas, Consultancy, said:
“I am delighted to join Mace to serve our existing clients and show our prospects the results they can expect working with our world-class teams. This is an incredibly exciting time for everyone we serve as Mace executes on its 2026 business strategy and priorities. I look forward to working with our teams across the Americas to further grow our offerings, delivery-focussed approach and impact.
“Mace’s track record of delivery alongside its commitment and passion to creating real value for clients and communities puts us in a fantastic position to deliver exceptional and transformative projects across the continent.”
KYIV — Russia has launched extensive missile raids across Ukraine and is building up troops near the northeastern city of Kupyansk to test Ukrainian defenses, just as Kyiv is warning that Moscow is gearing up to launch a new offensive.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, said in a statement that two Kalibr cruise missiles entered the airspace of Moldova and NATO member Romania, before veering into Ukrainian territory. Romania, however, cautioned that radar only detected a missile launched from a Russian ship in the Black Sea traveling close to its airspace — some 35 kilometers away — but not inside its territory.
“At approximately 10:33 a.m., these missiles crossed Romanian airspace. After that, they again entered the airspace of Ukraine at the crossing point of the borders of the three states. The missiles were launched from the Black Sea,” Zaluzhnyy said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy added, “Several Russian missiles flew through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. Today’s missiles are a challenge to NATO, collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped. Stopped by the world.”
Governors in Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Khmelnytskyi reported power cuts due to the barrage.
The attack started before dawn in the eastern region of Kharkiv, according to the governor, Oleg Synegubov.
“Today, at 4:00 a.m., about 12 rockets hit critical infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv and the region. Currently, emergency and stabilizing light shutdowns are being employed. About 150,000 people in Kharkiv remain without electricity,” Synegubov said.
Synegubov said the barrage came the same morning as Russian invasion forces increased their attacks near Kupyansk, a city in the Kharkiv region that Ukrainian forces liberated last fall. “The enemy has increased its presence on the front line and is testing our defense lines for weak points. Our defenders reliably hold their positions and are ready for any possible actions of the enemy,” Synegubov said in a statement.
He also reported that about eight people were injured in one of the latest Russian missiles strikes in Kharkiv. Two of the victims are in critical condition.
Meanwhile, in the west of the country, Ukrainian air defense units are firing back at multiple cruise missile attacks. “That is Russian revenge for the fact that the whole world supports us,” Khmelnitskyi Governor Serhiy Hamaliy said in a statement. He also reported a missile strike in the city, saying that part of Khmelnitsky was without power.
Ukrainian Air Force Command reported the destruction of five cruise missiles and five of seven Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones Russia launched from the coast of the Sea of Azov. The Russians also launched six Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from a Russian frigate in the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Air Force added that air defense units shot down 61 of 71 cruise missiles that Russia launched.
“The occupiers also launched a massive attack with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from the districts of Belgorod (Russia) and Tokmak (occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region),” the air force said in a statement. “Up to 35 anti-aircraft guided missiles (S-300) were launched in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, which cannot be destroyed in the air by means of air defense. Around 8:30 a.m. cruise missiles were launched from Tu-95 MS strategic bombers.”
President Biden is in New York today to promote a major restoration project of the Hudson River tunnel that’s partially funded by his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. CBS News anchor Anne-Marie Green breaks down some of the thousands of projects funded by the law.
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Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has a tight two-year timetable for securing EU membership that is bound to dominate discussions at this week’s historic EU-Ukraine summit, the first to take place on Ukrainian soil.
The problem? No one within the EU thinks this is realistic.
When EU commissioners travel to Kyiv later this week ahead of Friday’s summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the heads of the European Commission and Council, their main task is likely to involve managing expectations.
Shmyhal himself is imposing a tough deadline. “We have a very ambitious plan to join the European Union within the next two years,” he told POLITICO. “So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have this pre-entry stage of negotiations,” he said.
This throws down a gauntlet to the EU establishment, which is trying to keep Ukrainian membership as a far more remote concept.
French President Emmanuel Macron said last year it could be “decades” before Ukraine joins. Even EU leaders, who backed granting Ukraine candidate status at their summit last June, privately admit that the prospect of the country actually joining is quite some years away (and may be one reason they backed the idea in the first place.) After all, candidate countries like Serbia, Turkey and Montenegro have been waiting for many years, since 1999 in Ankara’s case.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv. It was, after all, Ukrainians’ fury at the decision of President Viktor Yanukovych to pull out of a political and economic association agreement with the EU at Russia’s behest that triggered the Maidan uprising of 2014 and set the stage for war. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it: Ukraine is “the only country where people got shot because they wrapped themselves in a European flag.”
Ukraine’s close allies in the EU such as Poland and the Baltic countries strongly support Kyiv’s membership push, seeing it as a democracy resisting an aggressor. Many of the EU old guard are far more wary, however, as Ukraine — a global agricultural superpower — could dilute their own powers and perks. Ukraine and Poland — with a combined population of 80 million — could team up to rival Germany as a political force in the European Council and some argue Kyiv would be an excessive drain on the EU budget.
Short-term deliverables
Friday’s summit in Kyiv — the first EU meeting of its kind to take place in an active war zone — will be about striking the right balance.
Though EU national leaders will not be in attendance, European Council officials have been busy liaising with EU member states about the final communiqué.
Some countries are insisting the statement should not stray far from the language used at the June European Council — emphasizing that while the future of Ukraine lies within the European Union, aspirant countries need to meet specific criteria. “Expectation is quite high in Kyiv, but there is a need to fulfill all the conditions that the Commission has set out. It’s a merit-based process,” said one senior EU official.
Ukraine is a conundrum for the EU. Many argue that Brussels has a particular responsibility to Kyiv | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Still, progress is expected when Zelenskyy meets with von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.
Shmyhal told POLITICO he hopes Ukraine can achieve a “substantial leap forward” on Friday, particularly in specific areas — an agreement on a visa-free regime for industrial goods; the suspension of customs duties on Ukrainian exports for another year; and “active progress” on joining the SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) payments scheme and the inclusion of Ukraine into the EU’s mobile roaming area.
“We expect progress and acceleration on our path towards signing these agreements,” he said.
Anti-corruption campaign
The hot topic — and one of the central question marks over Ukraine’s EU accession — will be Ukraine’s struggle against corruption. The deputy infrastructure minister was fired and deputy foreign minister stepped down this month over scandals related to war profiteering in public contracts.
“We need a reformed Ukraine,” said one senior EU official centrally involved in preparations for the summit. “We cannot have the same Ukraine as before the war.”
Shmyhal insisted that the Zelenskyy government is taking corruption seriously. “We have a zero-tolerance approach to corruption,” he said, pointing to the “lightning speed” with which officials were removed this month. “Unfortunately, corruption was not born yesterday, but we are certain that we will uproot corruption,” he said, openly saying that it’s key to the country’s EU accession path.
He also said the government was poised to revise its recent legislation on the country’s Constitutional Court to meet the demands of both the European Commission and the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe. Changes could come as early as this week, ahead of the summit, Shmyhal said.
Though Ukraine has announced a reform of the Constitutional Court, particularly on how judges are appointed, the Venice Commission still has concerns about the powers and composition of the advisory group of experts, the body which selects candidates for the court. The goal is to avoid political interference.
Shmyhal said these questions will be addressed. “We are holding consultations with the European Commission to see that all issued conclusions may be incorporated into the text,” he told POLITICO.
Nonetheless, the symbolic power of this week’s summit is expected to send a strong message to Moscow about Ukraine’s European aspirations.
European Council President Michel used his surprise visit to Kyiv this month to reassure Ukraine that EU membership will be a reality for Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) that he dreams that one day a Ukrainian will hold his job as president of the European Council.
“Ukraine is the EU and the EU is Ukraine,” he said. “We must spare no effort to turn this promise into reality as fast as we can.”
The key question for Ukrainians after Friday’s meeting will be how fast the rhetoric and promises can become a reality.
The long-awaited project to expand the sewer system for downtown Kings Park will soon be getting started, thanks to $5.4 million from Suffolk County.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, Deputy Suffolk County Executive Peter Scully and Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim were joined by other elected officials, and business and civic leaders in Kings Park Friday to announce the additional funding and cheer on Bellone as he signed the funding bill that had been passed by the Suffolk County Legislature. The money comes from the federal government via the American Rescue Plan Act.
The project, originally estimated to cost $20 million, which was provided by the state in 2014, has gotten more expensive, thanks to inflation and the increased cost of construction materials in the last few years.
The expansion of Sewer District #6, which will provide sewer service to downtown Kings Park, has seen myriad delays. But the construction on the project, designed by Melville-based H2M, is now expected to begin in late spring, according to Scully, and should be completed in about two years. Executives of the contracting firms that will be doing the work, including G&M Earth Moving, ALAC Contracting Corp. and L.E.B. Electric Ltd., attended the funding announcement and bill signing.
The new sewer service will enable the revitalization of Kings Park’s tired and outdated downtown, providing wastewater capacity for new businesses and redevelopment.
In 2016, the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce and Kings Park Civic Association came together, with assistance from Vision Long Island, to identify key issues that should be addressed in the development of a downtown revitalization plan and sewers were the lynchpin for that plan.
“It’s good to see this transformative project that’s been years in the making finally coming to fruition,” said Tony Tanzi, president of the Kings Park Chamber of Commerce. “It will transform our community and turn our downtown back to a place that people want to come to.”
Bellone called it a great day and touted the bi-partisan support for the project.
“This is something that matters not just for Kings Park, but for the region,” Bellone said. “The community really came together. By having that vision and having that consensus, we can work together and figure out the infrastructure.”
Wehrheim thanked Bellone and Scully, the county’s water czar, for their work in getting the project started.
“This has been a team effort from the beginning,” he said. “Without working together, things like this would never happen.”
Suffolk County Legis. Rob Trotta, who represents Kings Park, thanked the taxpayers, because he said they’re the ones footing the bill.
“The residents of Kings Park are finally going to get the sewer system that will greatly improve their downtown,” he said.
When a major corruption scandal broke in Ukraine last weekend, reporters faced an excruciating dilemma between professional duty and patriotism. The first thought that came to my mind was: “Should I write about this for foreigners? Will it make them stop supporting us?”
There was no doubting the severity of the cases that were erupting into the public sphere. They cut to the heart of the war economy. In one instance, investigators were examining whether the deputy infrastructure minister had profited from a deal to supply electrical generators at an inflated price, while the defense ministry was being probed over an overpriced contract to supply food and catering services to the troops.
Huge stories, but in a sign of our life-or-death times in Ukraine, even my colleague Yuriy Nikolov, who got the scoop on the inflated military contract, admitted he had done everything he could not to publish his investigation. He took his findings to public officials hoping that they might be able to resolve the matter, before he finally felt compelled to run it on the ZN.UA website.
Getting a scoop that shocks your country, forces your government to start investigations and reform military procurement, and triggers the resignation of top officials is ordinarily something that makes other journalists jealous. But I fully understand how Nikolov feels about wanting to hold back when your nation is at war. Russia (and Ukraine’s other critics abroad) are, after all, looking to leap upon any opportunity to undermine trust in our authorities.
A journalist is meant to stay a little distant from the situation he or she covers. It helps to stay impartial and to stick to the facts, not emotions. But what if staying impartial is impossible as you have to cover the invasion of your own country? Naturally, you have to keep holding your government to account, but you are also painfully aware that the enemy is out there looking to exploit any opportunity to erode faith in the leadership and undermine national security.
That is exactly what Ukrainian journalists have to deal with every day. In the first six months of the invasion, Ukrainian journalists and watchdogs decided to put their public criticism of the Ukrainian government on pause and focus on documenting Russian war crimes.
But that has backfired.
“This pause led to a rapid loss of accountability for many Ukrainian officials,” Mykhailo Tkach, one of Ukraine’s top investigative journalists, wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda.
His investigations about Ukrainian officials leaving the country during the war for lavish vacations in Europe led to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues. It also sparked the dismissal of the powerful deputy prosecutor general.
The Ukrainian government was forced to react to corruption and make a major reshuffle almost immediately. Would that happen if Ukrainian journalists decided to sit on their findings until victory? I doubt it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended up imposing a ban on officials traveling abroad during the war for non-work-related issues | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Is it still painful when you have to write about your own government’s officials’ flops when overwhelming enemy forces are trying to erase your nation from the planet, using every opportunity they can get to shake your international partners’ faith? Of course it is.
But in this case, there was definite room for optimism. Things are changing in Ukraine. The government had to react very quickly, under intense pressure from civil society and the independent press. Memes and social media posts immediately appeared, mocking the government’s pledge to buy eggs at massively inflated prices. Ultimately, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired and the deputy defense minister resigned.
This speedy response was praised by the European Commission and showed how far we really are from Russia, where authorities hunt down not the officials accused of corruption, but the journalists who report it.
As Tkach said, many believe that the war with the internal enemy will begin immediately after the victory over the external one.
However, we can’t really wait that long. It is important to understand that the sooner we win the battle with the internal enemy — high-profile corruption — the sooner we win the war against Russia.
“Destruction of corruption means getting additional funds for the defense capability of the country. And it means more military and civilian lives saved,” Tkach said.
They’re dazzlingly rich, and they expect to be in charge for a long, long time.
The monarchs leading Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia might seem from the outside like a trio of like-minded Persian Gulf autocrats. Yet their regional rivalry is intense, and Western capitals have become a key venue in a reputational battle royale.
“All of these governments … really want to have the largest mindspace among Western governments,” said Jon B. Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As the Gulf states seek to wean themselves off the oil that made them rich, they know they’ll need friends to help transform their economies (and modernize their societies).
“They think it’s important not to be tarred as mere hydrocarbon producers who are ruining the planet,” Alterman added.
The Qatari government categorically denies any unlawful behavior, saying it “works through institution-to-institution engagement and operates in full compliance with international laws and regulations.”
Against the background of regional rivalries, that engagement has become increasingly robust. While tensions with Riyadh have eased over the past few years, Qatar’s mutual antagonism with the United Arab Emirates has been particularly severe.
Qatar’s survival strategy
Regional rivalries burst beyond the Middle East in 2017 in a standoff that would reshape regional dynamics.
Until then, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been essentially frenemies. As members of the Gulf Coordination Council, they’d been working toward building a common market and currency in the region — not so different from the European Union.
But different responses to the Arab Spring frayed relations to a breaking point.
The Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network gave a platform to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party that rode a wave of unrest into power in Egypt and challenged governments throughout the Arab world. And Doha didn’t just offer a bullhorn — it gave the Muslim Brotherhood direct financial backing.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, considered the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group.
Along with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE severed diplomatic ties with Doha in June 2017, barring Qatar’s access to airspace and sea routes; Saudi Arabia closed its border, blocking Qatar’s only land crossing.
Among the demands: close Al Jazeera, end military coordination with Turkey and step away from Iran. Qatar refused — even though it was crunch time for building infrastructure ahead of the 2022 World Cup and 40 percent of Qatar’s food supplies came through Saudi Arabia.
Fighting what it called an illegal “blockade” became an existential mission for Doha.
“The only thing Qatar could do was make sure everyone knew Qatar exists and is a nice place,” said MEP Hannah Neumann, chair of the Parliament’s delegation for relations with the Arab Peninsula (DARP).
“They really stepped up the diplomatic efforts all around the world to also show, ‘We are the good ones,’” said Neumann, of the German Greens.
Qatar needed Brussels because it had already lost an even bigger ally: Washington. Not only did then-President Donald Trump take the side of Qatar’s rivals in the fight; he also appeared to take credit for the idea of isolating Qatar — even though the U.S.’s largest military base in the region is just southwest of Doha.
Elsewhere, Qatar had already been working with the London-headquartered consultancy Portland Communications since at least 2014 — as its World Cup hosting coup was becoming a PR nightmare, with stories emerging over bribed FIFA officials and exploited migrant workers.
Exploding onto the EU scene
In Brussels, Doha leaned on the head of its EU Mission, Abdulrahman Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, who had moved to Belgium in 2017 from Germany, to step up European relations.
Within days of the fissure, Al-Khulaifi appeared in meetings at NATO, and within months opened a think tank called the Middle East Dialogue Center to hone Doha’s image as an open promoter of debate (in contrast,it contended, to its neighbors) and pressure the EU to intervene in the Mideast.
By the next year, he was speaking on panels about combating violent extremism — alongside Dutch and Belgian federal police. By late 2019, Al-Khulaifi hosted the first meeting of embassy’s Qatar-EU friendship group with a “working dinner.”
“The situation following the blockade has pushed Qatar to establish closer relations outside the context of the regional crisis with, for example, the European Union,” Pier Antonio Panzeri, then chair of the Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told Euractiv in 2018.
The following year, Panzeri would attend the Qatari-hosted “International Conference on National, Regional and International Mechanisms to Combat Impunity and Ensure Accountability under International Law,” and heap praise on the country’s human rights record.
Panzeri is now in a Belgian prison, facing corruption charges; his NGO, Fight Impunity, is under intense scrutiny for being a possible front.
Neumann said that Qatar’s survival strategy has paid off. “Absolutely, it worked,” she said. “I think it’s fair enough, if they didn’t do it with illegal means.”
Directly or indirectly, Qatar clocked several big victories during this period, including multiple resolutions in Parliament on human rights in Saudi Arabia and a call to end arms exports to Riyadh in the wake of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Doha also inked a cooperation arrangement with the EU in March 2018, setting the stage for closer ties.
Frenemies once again
Since Saudi Arabia and Qatar signed a deal to end the crisis two years ago, Riyadh-Doha relations have generally thawed. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, traveled to Qatar in November for the World Cup and embraced Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, 42, while wearing a scarf in the host’s colors.
However, relations between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, 61 — remain chilly.
As the Gulf transforms, the United Arab Emirates “has come to see that role as being a status quo power,” said Alterman. On the part of its neighbor, “Qatar has come to see that role as aligning with forces of change in the region, and that’s created a certain amount of mutual resentment.”
Qatar’s smaller scale contributes to Doha’s sense of internal security, fueling its openness to engaging with groups that others see as an existential threat.
Qataris see themselves as “champions of the Davids against the Goliath,” said Andreas Krieg, an assistant professor at King’s College London who has worked in the past as a consultant for the Qatari armed forces. Civil society organizations founded by “a range of different opposition figures, Saudi opposition figures in the West, have been supported financially by Qatar as well,” Krieg added. (Khashoggi, one of the era’s most prominent Saudi opposition figures, had connections to the state-backed Qatar Foundation.) “Hence why Qatar was always seen as sort of a thorn in the side of its neighbors.”
And while the €1.5 million cash haul confiscated by Belgian federal police looks like an eye-popping sum, it certainly pales in comparison to the amount the Gulf states spend on legal lobbying in Brussels. And that sum, in turn, pales in comparison to what those countries spend in Washington.
“Brussels isn’t that important,” Krieg said. “If you look at the money that these Gulf countries spend in Washington, these are tens of millions of dollars every year on think tanks, academics … creating their own media outlets, investing strategically into Fox News, investing into massive PR operations.”
Nonetheless, the EU remains a key target. Abu Dhabi is strengthening its “long-standing partnership” with Brussels on economic and regional security matters “through deep, strategic cooperation with EU institutions and Member States,” said a UAE official, in a statement.
“Brussels was always a hub to create a narrative,” said Krieg.
And right now, each of the region’s power players is deeply motivated to change that narrative.
Alterman invoked a broad impression of the Gulf countries as “people who have more money than God who want to take the world back to the 7th Century.”
But that’s wrong, he said. “This is all about shaping the future with remarkably high stakes, profound discomfort about how the world will relate to them over the next 30 to 50 years — and frankly, a series of rulers who see themselves being in power for the next 30 to 50 years.”
KYIV — When the Russians first came to the school where Larysa taught history in southeastern Ukraine, they asked for all the history and Ukrainian language textbooks.
The director refused to hand them over.
The school closed — but then reopened virtually on September 1, with up to 80 percent of its 700 pupils attending online. More than half of them remain in occupied Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia region, said Larysa, who left in April for the Odesa region.
“Some go to Russian school and do homework with us,” she said. “We do all we can to make it incognito. We deleted all electronic lists, never put up any photos or screenshots or write names.”
Larysa did not give her surname or name the school for security reasons. Half of her colleagues are still on occupied territory and teaching online, risking imprisonment or worse from occupying forces — two were already detained and later released in September.
“They’re holding lessons in extreme conditions,” Larysa said. “Some were saved just because someone was on lookout. The wife was teaching a lesson and her husband was watching from the window so that she had time to hide everything before they came.”
After reopening in autumn 2021, following the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, Ukrainian schools have moved mostly back online following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. But from bombs to blackouts to displacement to occupation, millions of Ukrainian children and young adults face an education interrupted, with educators struggling to work under desperate conditions.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed, according to the Ministry of Education. School buildings are at risk of shelling or lack heating after massive damage to the country’s energy infrastructure, while blackouts and interrupted internet connections hamper learning from home.
Meanwhile, thousands of students and teachers living under occupation face pressure to switch to Russian schooling.
Education, with its propaganda potential to influence young hearts and minds, has become a front line in the war.
Ideological battle
Crimea, under Russian control for more than eight years, is an example of how Russian education in occupied territories aims — with eventual success — to erase Ukrainian identity and militarize children.
History lessons there claim that Ukraine was always part of Russia. Army cadet courses and classes sponsored by law enforcement agencies start for children as young as six, says Maria Sulyanina from the Crimean Human Rights Group.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, more than 3,000 educational institutions in Ukraine — 10 percent of the total — have been damaged or destroyed | Genya Savilov AFP via Getty images
“We see that these children who were small kids when the occupation started, after eight years they have been turned into Russians,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has steadily been moving its educational system away from that inherited from the Soviet Union. It has relegated Russian to foreign language teaching; moved Russian literature to part of the study of world literature; and revised history courses to include events like the Holodomor, the Soviet-caused famine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians and is still largely denied in Russia.
Yet despite Russia’s carrot-and-stick approach — from September, parents in recently occupied territories are paid a one-off of 10,000 rubles (€145) to send their children to Russian school, plus 4,000 per month that they stay — many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it.
But the war has made Ukrainian education extremely tenuous.
When Russia invaded and occupied Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the vocational school where Viktoria Scherbakova taught was pressured to switch to the Russian system, and later damaged and looted.
Now, her classroom — and office — is the kitchen table at a small rented flat she shares with her two children and elderly parents in Kyiv, after she and her children fled the Russian occupation. The flat is also her daughter’s Kharkiv university virtual lecture hall and her son’s Kyiv ninth-grade classroom on days when air raid sirens sound and he can’t attend school.
The motor transport vocational college in Kupiansk where Scherbakova taught, which offered practical training for mechanics and drivers along with courses in transport logistics to some 300 pupils aged 14 to 18, exists as a displaced, virtual entity, with no home of its own. Although she is offering lessons online, Scherbakova doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to teach there again in person.
“We’re not in Kyiv, not in Kharkiv, not in Kupiansk,” she said. “We’re not anywhere.”
The education front line
As of October, about 1,300 schools were on Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Teachers have been targeted for collaboration and detained, threatened and mistreated. Staff have been sent to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea for retraining in the Russian education system or told they would be replaced by teachers from Russia if they refused to work.
In Kupiansk, after the then-mayor surrendered to the Russians on February 27, educational establishments stayed open. However, many parents kept their children out of school — including Scherbakova, whose 14-year-old son stayed at home although she herself continued to work at the college.
Apart from hoisting a Russian flag outside, the occupiers left them alone — until June. But by the end of term, it became clear that staff would be forced to decide: leave, or start the next school year under the Russian system.
“And if you didn’t work for them, it wasn’t clear what the consequences would be,” said Scherbakova. “If you openly said you didn’t support them, you would end up in their prisons or cellars.”
Many families are sticking to a Ukrainian education for their children, and teachers are still teaching it | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
One school director in Kupiansk, who refused to open her school after occupation, spent almost a month detained in the basement of the police station.
Of nearly 50 teaching and administrative staff in the vocational college, only seven refused to work with the Russian occupying authorities, according to Scherbakova.
“I’m ashamed of my college,” she said.
Spurred by the apparent ultimatum, Scherbakova and her children managed to leave Kupiansk for free Ukrainian territory in early June. The college was moved to operate virtually in Ukrainian-controlled territory, with her role shifting to acting director. With a colleague, they printed diplomas for those graduates who were reachable — 35 out of 53 — and developed a program to start the new teaching year.
But when she and a colleague started calling students, they found out that the teenagers had been enrolled to start the year in the college in Kupiansk — under the Russian system.
The physical and the virtual college started teaching parallel courses on September 1. Eight days later, Ukrainian forces took back Kupiansk.
When Scherbakova went back to Kupiansk after liberation, she found that though the college had been completely looted of its equipment and training vehicles, the library was full of untouched new Russian textbooks.
Some of the college staff who had remained in Kupiansk fled to Russia. Others got in touch with Scherbakova asking if they could work with her.
“At first I didn’t have an answer. I’m not the SBU [Ukrainian security services], I can’t judge them,” she said.
Some are under suspicion of collaboration. Later, the Ministry of Education clarified that teachers who had collaborated or brought in the Russian education system were banned from teaching. According to Ukrainian legislation on collaboration adopted in early September, teachers who engage in Russian propaganda in schools can be sentenced to prison terms. By mid-September, 19 proceedings had been opened against teachers in Ukraine.
Back in Kyiv,Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine.
Her students, scattered around the country by war, face power outages too. Others, displaced abroad, are fitting lessons around schooling in Germany or England. And some remain in Kupiansk, recently liberated from occupation, where there is no internet, and the town comes under Russian shelling morning and night.
Viktoria Scherbakova conducts online lessons and end-of-term exams amid daily power cuts since Russia began bombing essential infrastructure in Ukraine | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty images
“Those ones, all I can do is call and ask: ‘Are you alive? How did the night go? This is your exam question, just tell me something, whatever comes into your head,’” said Scherbakova.
“Of course, I can’t give them good marks. But I can’t abandon them.”
Lost generation
The physical challenges of war and the ideological battle as Russia seeks to impose its education system threaten the very basis of education in Ukraine: participation.
Scherbakova says her students, many of whom come from low-income families, are dropping out of online courses. “They need to survive. They dropped everything to find work,” she said. “Many of them had to leave their homes, and they need to live on something.”
Teachers are leaving the profession too — due to migration, retirement, low salaries, and war-related stresses and bans. The Kharkiv region has lost nearly 3,000 of 21,500 teachers since February, according to its education department.
In Kupiansk, as in many liberated towns and villages, the will to learn is not matched by the necessary infrastructure of electricity, internet and teachers. Children can only get an education if they move.
“We don’t want to leave. This is our land, and we want to live here,” said Iryna Protsenko, who was recently collecting humanitarian aid in Kupiansk with her daughter Zlata, 6. The family ran a small dairy business in the town before the war and stayed throughout occupation. “But now I’m afraid we will have to leave, because of school.”
Zlata, smiling shyly next to her mother, wants to learn, said Protsenko. She should start school this year. For the moment they read books together at home — easier now that electricity has been restored. “But she’s lonely.”
Ukrainian children were already starved of live interaction due to pandemic restrictions. Now, with only online teaching, plus the interrupted routines and safety restrictions of war, they are becoming increasingly stressed and withdrawn.
“It’s not so much the quality of education as the communication. They are losing socialization,” said Larysa, the teacher from Berdiansk.
Some parents compare the situation to that of their grandparents, who missed years of education during World War II. When the war was over, they had to study together with much younger children, earning themselves the name ‘pererostki,’ or ‘overgrown.’
“I think it will be like my grandma,” said Maria Varenikova, a journalist living in Kyiv with her son Nazar, 11. “Something will have to be figured out in Ukraine, given that for years children don’t have an education because of COVID, and now war.”
“They try hard and worry so much. They are lost children” said teacher Viktoria Scherbakova | Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty images
Nazar’s school opened in person this September, keeping going with generators, bottled water and a basement bomb shelter. But Nazar is repeating the largely lost previous school year.
Scherbakova’s son, on top of the trauma of fleeing his home, had to cram in most of the last school year in extra classes over the summer in order to progress to the next grade in Kyiv.
“They try hard and worry so much,” said Scherbakova. “They are lost children.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow could launch new strikes over Christmas, hours before Russian missiles killed at least five people in an attack on the southern city of Kherson.
“With the approaching holiday season, Russian terrorists may become active again,” Zelenskyy said late on Friday. “They despise Christian values and any values in general. Therefore, please heed the air raid signals, help each other and always take care of each other.”
The Russian attack on Kherson on Saturday also injured at least 35 people, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy condemned the Kherson assault as an act of terror. “These are not military facilities,” he wrote on Facebook. “This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”
Zelenskyy sent a stark warning to Russia, according to the transcript of his Friday address.
“Citizens of Russia must clearly understand that terror never goes unanswered,” he said.
The warning comes as Russia is likely to be limiting its strikes on key infrastructure due to a shortage of missiles, the U.K. Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
“Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles,” the ministry said. A broader shortage of munitions is weighing on Russian military operations, it said, adding that “Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.”
Ukrainian troops killed another 480 Russians soldiers, Kyiv’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday, taking the overall Russian casualties to more than 101,000 since Moscow’s tanks rolled into Ukraine in February. The Ukrainian ministry also said that Russia lost another tank and more drones. POLITICO hasn’t independently verified these figures.
Zelenskyy also thanked the Netherlands for its new €2.5 billion support package for Ukraine. While the allocation of the funds will depend on Kyiv’s needs, the Dutch government said on Friday it expects the money to help fund “military aid, support essential repair and reconstruction activities and contribute financially to efforts to combat impunity.”
The Ukrainian president spoke after a meeting with his military commanders, saying that Kyiv is “preparing for different variants of actions of the terrorist state” and “will respond.” The country is also working to step up its diplomatic efforts toward traditional partners and “countries in which our influence is still less than we need,” such as Latin American and African nations, he said.
Millions of Ukrainians face a winter of extreme hardship as Russia intensifies its attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure. Nine months after the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin is now being accused of weaponizing the weather. Imtiaz Tyab reports.
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LONDON — Three years after leaving the EU to chart its own course, Britain finds itself caught between two economic behemoths in a brewing transatlantic trade war.
In one corner sits the United States, whose Congress in August passed the Biden administration’s much-vaunted $369 billion program of green subsidies, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
In the opposing corner is the European Union, which fears Washington’s subsidy splurge will pull investment — particularly in electric vehicles — away from Europe, hitting carmakers hard.
The EU is preparing its own retaliatory package of subsidies; Washington shows little sign of changing course. Fears of a trade war are growing fast.
Now sitting squarely outside the ring, the U.K. can only look on with horror, and quietly ask Washington to soften the blow. But there are few signs the softly-softly approach is bearing fruit. Britain now risks being clobbered by both sides.
“It’s not in the U.K.’s interest for the U.S. and EU to go down this route,” said Sam Lowe, a partner at Flint Global and expert in U.K. and EU trade policy. “Given the U.K.’s current economic position, it can’t really afford to engage in a subsidy war with both.” The British government has just unleashed a round of fiscal belt-tightening after a market rout, following months of political turmoil.
For iconic British motor brands, the row over the Biden administration’s IRA comes with real costs.
The U.S. is the second-largest destination for British-made vehicles after the EU, and the automotive sector is one of Britain’s top goods exporters.
Manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover have warned publicly about the “very serious challenges” posed by the new U.S. law and its plan for electric vehicle tax credits aimed at boosting American industry.
Kemi on the case
U.K. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has for months been privately urging top U.S. officials to soften the impact of the electric vehicle subsidies on Britain by carving out exemptions, U.K. officials said.
When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited London in early October, Badenoch pushed her to rethink the strategy. The U.K. trade chief brought that same message to Washington in a series of private meetings earlier this month, including at a sit-down with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.
Badenoch has “raised this issue on many levels,” an official from the U.K.’s Department for International Trade said, citing conversations with U.S. Ambassador to Britain Jane Hartley, with Secretary Raimondo, “and with members of the Biden administration and senior representatives of both parties.”
The Cabinet minister has also spoken out in public, telling the pro-free market Cato Institute in Washington earlier this month that “the substantial new tax credits for electric cars not only bar vehicles made in the U.K. from the U.S. market, but also affect vehicles made in the U.S. by U.K. manufacturers.”
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Badenoch’s comments echo concerns raised by both British automotive lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), and by Jaguar Land Rover, in comments filed with the U.S. Treasury Department.
The SMMT warned that Biden’s green vehicle package has several “elements of concern that risk creating an uneven competitive environment, with U.K.-based manufacturers and suppliers potentially penalised.” The lobby group is taking aim at the credit scheme’s requirement for green vehicles to be built in North America, with significant subsidies available only if critical minerals are sourced from the U.S. or a U.S. ally.
In response to Washington’s plans, the EU is preparing what could amount to billions in subsidies for its own industries hit by the U.S. law, which also offers tax breaks to boost American green businesses such as solar panel manufacturers. Britain faces being squeezed in both markets, while lacking any say in whatever response Brussels decides.
Protectionism that impacts like-minded allies “isn’t the answer to the geopolitical challenges we face,” the British trade department official warned, adding “there is a serious risk” the law disrupts “vital” global supply chains of batteries and electric vehicles.
The conversations Badenoch had this month in Washington were “reassuring,” the official added. “But it’s for them to address and find solutions.”
‘Ton of work to do’
Yet others believe Badenoch will have a hard time getting her colleagues in the U.S. — now cooling on a much-touted bilateral trade deal — to take action. “The U.S. is minimally focused on how any of their policies are going to impact the U.K.,” admitted a U.S.-based representative of a major business group.
While Britain and the U.S. are “very close allies”, they added, those in Washington “just don’t really view the U.K. as an interesting trade partner and market right now.” The U.S. is more focused, they noted, on pushing back against China, meaning Badenoch has “a ton of work to do” getting the administration to soften the IRA.
Nevertheless the U.S. is still working out how its law will actually be implemented, the business figure said, and is assembling a working group on how the IRA impacts trade allies. This has the potential, they added, to “alleviate a lot of the concerns coming out of the U.K.”
Late Tuesday evening, the SMMT called on the British government to provide greater domestic support for the sector as it prepares to ramp up its own electric vehicle production. The group wants an extension past April on domestic support for firms’ energy costs; a boost to government investment in green energy sources; and a speedier national rollout of charging infrastructure and staff training.
In the meantime, Britain’s options appear limited.
Newly manufactured Land Rover and Range Rover vehicles parked and waiting to be loaded for export | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
The U.K. “could consider legal action” and haul the U.S. before the World Trade Organization or challenge the EU through provisions in the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement, said Lowe of consultancy Flint. “But — to be blunt — neither of them care what we have to say.”
Anna Jerzewska, a trade advisor and associate fellow at the UK Trade Policy Observatory, suggested pressing ahead “with your own domestic policy and efforts to support strategic industries is perhaps more important” than complaining about foreign subsidy schemes. But she noted that after a “chaotic” political period, Britain is “likely to take longer to respond to external changes and challenges.”
And in truth, Britain “can’t afford to out-subsidize the U.S. and EU,” said David Henig, a trade expert with the European Centre For International Political Economy think tank.
Outside the EU, Britain could work to rally allies such as Japan and South Korea who are also unhappy with the Biden administration’s protectionist measures, he noted. “But I don’t think we’re in that position,” Henig said, as it would take a concerted diplomatic effort, and the U.K.’s automotive sector would “have to be well positioned” in the first place, not struggling as it is. He predicted London’s lobbying in Washington and Brussels is “not going to get anywhere.”
NATO allies finally agreed earlier this year that China is a “challenge.” What that means is anyone’s guess.
That’s the task now facing officials from NATO’s 30-member sprawl since they settled on the label in June: Turning an endlessly malleable term into an actual plan.
Progress, thus far, has been modest — at best.
At one end, China hawks like the U.S. are trying to converge NATO’s goals with their own desire to constrain Beijing. At the other are China softliners like Hungary who want to engage Beijing. Then there’s a vast and shifting middle: hawks that don’t want to overly antagonize Beijing; softliners that still fret about economic reliance on China.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith insisted the American and NATO strategies can be compatible.
“I see tremendous alignment between the two,” she told POLITICO. But, she acknowledged, translating the alliance’s words into action is “a long and complicated story.”
Indeed, looming over the entire debate is the question of whether China even merits so much attention right now. War is raging in NATO’s backyard. Russia is not giving up its revanchist ambitions.
“NATO was not conceived for operations in the Pacific Ocean — it’s a North Atlantic alliance,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, in a recent interview with POLITICO.
“Certainly one can consider other threats and challenges,” he added. “But [for] the time being, don’t you think that we have enough threats and challenges on the traditional scenario of NATO?”
The issue will be on the table this week in Bucharest, where foreign ministers from across the alliance will sign off on a new report about responding to China. While officials have agreed on several baseline issues, the talks will still offer a preview of the tough debates expected to torment NATO for years, especially given China’s anticipated move to throttle Taiwan — the semi-autonomous island the U.S. has pledged to defend.
“Now,” said one senior European diplomat, “the ‘so what’ is not easy.”
30 allies, 30 opinions
NATO’s “challenge” label for China — which came at an annual summit in Madrid — is a seemingly innocuous word that still represented an unprecedented show of Western unity against Beijing’s rise.
In a key section of the alliance’s new strategic blueprint, leaders wrote that “we will work together responsibly, as Allies, to address the systemic challenges” that China poses to the military alliance.
It was, in many ways, a historic moment, hinting at NATO’s future and reflecting deft coordination among 30 members that have long enjoyed vastly different relationships with Beijing.
The U.S. has driven much of the effort to draw NATO’s attention to China, arguing the alliance must curtail Beijing’s influence, reduce dependencies on the Asian power and invest in its own capabilities. Numerous allies have backed this quest, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.
China is “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” the U.S. wrote in its own national security strategy released last month.
NATO is a wide-ranging alliance | Denis Doyle/Getty Images
But NATO is a wide-ranging alliance. Numerous eastern European countries lean toward these hawks but want to keep the alliance squarely focused on the Russian threat. Some are wary of angering China, and the possibility of pushing Beijing further into Moscow’s arms. Meanwhile, a number of western European powers fret over China’s role in sensitive parts of the Western economy but still want to maintain economic links.
Now the work is on to turn these disparate sentiments into something usable.
“There is a risk that we endlessly debate the adjectives that we apply here,” said David Quarrey, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to NATO.
“We are very focused on practical implementation,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “I think that’s where the debate needs to go here — and I think we are making progress with that.”
For Quarrey and Smith, the U.S. ambassador, that means getting NATO to consider several components: building more protections in cyberspace, a domain China is seeking to dominate; preparing to thwart attacks on the infrastructure powering society, a Western vulnerability Russia has exposed; and ensuring key supply chains don’t run through China.
Additionally, Quarrey said, NATO must also deepen “even further” its partnerships with regional allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
While NATO allies can likely broadly agree on goals like boosting cyber defenses, there’s some grumbling about the ramifications of pivoting to Asia.
The U.S. “wants as much China as possible to make NATO relevant to China-minded Washingtonians,” the senior European diplomat said. But, this person added, it is “not clear where NATO really adds value.”
And the U.K., the diplomat argued, is pressing NATO on China because it is “in need of some multilateral framework after Brexit.”
Perhaps most importantly, a turn to China raises existential questions about Europe’s own security. Currently, Europe is heavily reliant on U.S. security guarantees, U.S. troops stationed locally and U.S. arms suppliers.
“An unspoken truth is that to reinforce Taiwan,” the European diplomat said, the U.S. would not be “in a position to reinforce permanently in Europe.”
Europeans, this person said, “have to face the music and do more.”
Compromise central
Smith, the U.S. ambassador, realizes different perspectives on China persist within NATO.
The upcoming report on China therefore hits the safer themes, like defending critical infrastructure. While some diplomats had hoped for a more ambitious report, Smith insisted she was satisfied. The U.S. priority, she said, is to formally get the work started.
“We could argue,” she said, about “the adjectives and the way in which some of those challenges are described. But what was most important for the United States was that we were able to get all of those workstreams in the report.”
But even that is a baby step on the long highway ahead for NATO. Agreeing to descriptions and areas of work is one thing, actually doing that work is another.
“We’re still not doing much,” said a second senior European diplomat. “It’s still a report describing what areas we need to work on — there’s a lot in front of us.”
Among the big questions that remain unanswered: How could China be integrated into NATO’s defense planning? How would NATO backfill the U.S. support that currently goes to Europe if some of it is redirected to Asia? Will European allies offer Taiwan support in a crisis scenario?
Western capitals’ unyielding support for Kyiv — and the complications the war has created — is also being closely watched as countries game plan for a potential military showdown in the Asia-Pacific.
Asked last month whether the alliance would respond to an escalation over Taiwan, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told POLITICO that “the main ambition is, of course, to prevent that from happening,” partly by working more closely with partners in the area.
Smith similarly demurred when asked about the NATO role if a full-fledged confrontation breaks out over Taiwan — a distinct possibility given Beijing’s stated desire to reunify the island with the mainland.
Instead, Smith pointed to how Pacific countries had backed Ukraine half a world away during the current war, saying “European allies have taken note.”
She added: “I think it’s triggered some questions about, should other scenarios unfold in the future, how would those Atlantic and Pacific allies come together again, to defend the core principles of the [United Nations] Charter.”
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Scaling your business might sound like a dream come true. But without the proper infrastructure in place, it can quickly turn into an absolute nightmare. Trying to grow when you haven’t put solid building blocks in place is like throwing up a tent on quicksand. It won’t be long before you sink — and at that point, getting out might not be an option.
Many companies, especially newer ones, overlook theimportance of infrastructure in business. Unfortunately, their oversight can often lead them to fail when they try to gain steam. A 2022 CB Insights study of failed startups revealed the top dozen reasons that can lead to an organization’s demise. Three of those reasons are related to a lack of proper infrastructure: a flawed business model (19%), a poorly hired team (14%) and stakeholder disharmony (7%).
You might want to think of constructing your infrastructure like planning a vacation. Most vacationers don’t put their families in the car and take off for the week without prior planning. They create a general road map based on their goals, their budget, the number of people and maybe some very personalized factors such as preferred types of restaurants or lodging. The road map would need to be flexible enough to handle pivots but sturdy enough to provide a definitive guide, perhaps with a few guardrails.
The same is true for business. When you’ve invested in a framework for scaling up, you reward yourself with a higher likelihood of seeing your business scaling strategy come to fruition. You also make scaling less stressful because everyone is working toward the same objectives rather than moving toward cross-purposes.
A solid infrastructure is a crucial building block to ultimately see growth and scalability in your business. Keep the following suggestions in mind to assemble your ideal infrastructure:
1. Make sure you have the right internal team in place
It will be challenging for your business to keep getting bigger if you have several skills and knowledge gaps in your team. The same is true if your staff is working at (or beyond) full capacity and you don’t plan on bringing in any help. If your employees feel overwhelmed or unprepared as you scale up, you’ll see your growth opportunities fall apart at the seams.
It is imperative to make sure you have the right people in place that have digital DNA and ensure your term is cross-functional with a high-level understanding of how to serve across all functions. For example, a technical person who knows how to create proper onsite functionality and work with the proper tracking tools such as pixels and tag manager will create results that are significantly more beneficial to the company.
You can start measuring your team’s strength by developing two organizational charts. The first should show your organization as it is today, and the second should show it as it needs to be for your company to scale. Be sure to pick out any places where team members will require training to participate fully. Then figure out how to deliver that training so you can remain competitive throughout the business’s rapid growth.
A recent Capterra survey indicates that nearly half of all companies asked said they were putting more funds into upskilling. Doing likewise makes sense because your employees will then be able to exhibit the confidence to master scaling, thanks to their education and the company’s reorganization.
If your marketing efforts aren’t producing impressive returns now, they won’t suddenly start working great just because you scale. You could even end up wasting dollars on poorly designed marketing campaigns that don’t reach the right audiences or deliver the data you need. As one study found, around one-quarter of all marketing budget funds could end up going down the drain for myriad reasons.
Marketing is a critical component because it sets the stage for you to bring in the leads you need to scale. Without more leads, you can’t grow — case closed. So, before you get into growth mode, you need to refine your marketing, from PPC to SEO and all the acronyms in between. Start by determining which marketing tactics are driving the most qualified prospects into the top or middle of your sales funnel. You want to hone those tactics, so start testing ways to make them produce leads on a reliable basis.
Don’t be afraid to take on a partner to outsource your marketing. Trying to do everything in-house can be both costly and challenging, particularly as your marketing becomes more complex (hint: It will!). The benefits of a partnership with an agency or provider that understands your business are widespread. You’ll have access to expertise, advanced tools and innovative strategies that you don’t usually have in-house. Even if you do have in-house marketing, the team might not be familiar with what works best in an ever-changing digital age. In contrast, an agency with multiple clients is more commonly on the cutting edge of innovation.
Plus, with an agency, you won’t have to lean so heavily on your capital expenditures and employees to deploy campaigns, track data, create content or generate and interpret reports. Most importantly, a great agency will not only increase your chances to grow successfully but also help you achieve your goals faster with less effort and total investment.
3. Be certain your product works
This might sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many companies go all out before making sure they’ve addressed glaring flaws in the items they sell. Even if you’re in a service industry, you must ensure all customer-facing experiences, features, assets and the like are ready for prime time.
Trying to gain steam when you’re not selling something worth buying makes zero sense and often creates unnecessary friction between buyers and sellers. Nonetheless, companies routinely spend about 20% of their sales income on poor-quality products that haven’t been adequately addressed. Not only will your sales and customer support representatives end up fielding unhappy calls all the time, but your brand reputation could take a terrible hit, too. As part of your infrastructure planning, be honest about any design snags in your offerings. Then spend time correcting them.
Don’t forget that processes might also deserve some tweaks. Let’s say your customers constantly complain about your time to ship. Those complaints aren’t going to evaporate when you get larger. Smoothing them out makes a lot of sense, especially during the beginning stages of growth.
Scaling might be on your mind in the near future. Don’t rev the motor just yet, though. Make sure your infrastructure roadmap includes everything you need to make your scale adventure an unmitigated success.
An enormous sinkhole in Hinton, West Virginia, that has threatened to swallow the town’s police station on Route 20 has spurred officials from the state Division of Highways to pour fill material under the road and start construction of a 120-foot bridge over the hole, per CNN.
“We just put it together like a big Lego set,” said Joe Pack, chief engineer of district operations of the West Virginia Division of Highways, in a press release Friday.
The sinkhole first appeared in June and was initially 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The police department moved personnel from the building in July and expects the building will eventually have to be demolished, WVNS-TV reported. Fill material proved to be a successful solution for under the road until rains from Hurricane Nicole earlier this month washed it all out — and made the sinkhole even bigger.
Construction of a temporary bridge began Saturday and is expected to take 24 to 48 hours. Officials will ultimately have to replace the 90-year-old drain beneath the road, which caused the collapse in the first place, with a new, permanent 300-foot steel alternative.
Several schools in the area were forced to move their classes online as a result of the gaping depression. David Warvel, the superintendent of schools in Summers County, told CNN that all sixth- to 12th-graders attended class remotely for all of last week.
The sinkhole was initially 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep but has only grown larger.
West Virginia Department of Transportation
In-person learning will return when the bridge is built, while the permanent steel drainage structure is proving to be a more complicated issue. The state will soon be accepting bids for a contract for its construction, according to state Sen. Stephen Baldwin.
“A long term fix has been identified and will be put out to bid ASAP,” Baldwin wrote on Facebook. “It will cost around $5 million. The state will pay for it.”
According to the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, the state’s eastern region, which includes Summers County, is made of karst terrain — which is prone to sinkholes due to its porous limestone material and various other soluble rock formations.
Sinkholes are usually caused when the acidic groundwater dissolves that limestone — and other soluble rocks like salt beds, domes, gypsum and various carbonate rocks — and the ground beneath the soil gives way, according to the United States Geological Survey.
As it stands, construction of the bridge should be completed by the end of the day Monday, and the next stage of a more permanent fix will commence soon.
