- The fortune of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest oligarch, has increased by $830 million since the beginning of the year and his total net worth hit $6 billion as of Feb. 1, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
- The Azov Regiment is returning to the Donbas war zone in a full combat deployment after more than three years of being effectively confined to barracks.
- Zurab Alasania, who was fired on Jan. 31 as the CEO of Suspilne Telebachennya (Public Television), posted a document on Feb. 1 according to which one of the supervisory board’s complaints against him was a lack of coverage of some events attended by President Petro Poroshenko.
- Ukrainian independent journalists on Feb. 1 announced the creation of an informal group to protect the freedom of speech. The creation of the group, called Initiative 34, was announced in a joint statement signed by dozens of journalists from prominent independent media outlets.
- A draft law registered in parliament seeks to allow for free-market modernizations, making the country’s railway market — currently a state-owned monopoly — more competitive and open. But some have called into question the motives of the lawmakers.
- Ukrainian car-owners have registered 65,000 imported cars with European Union, license numbers, paying Hr 4.1 billion, or some $145 million, to the budget since Nov. 25, 2018, when new rules on customs clearance were introduced.
- A petition calling for the legalization of the use of cannabis for medicinal reasons in Ukraine on the Verkhovna Rada website on Jan. 30 has already drawn 6,600 signatures and the support of Acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun.
- Dozens of wild animals, some from endangered species, were found in caged in poor conditions of a private zoo located in a back alley of Pokrovsk, a Donetsk Oblast city.
- In strange news today: The Russian Orthodox Church wants to create an adventure video game based on the conflict between the Moscow-based church and the one in Constantinople. Russian clergy supported the idea on Jan. 30 during the Christmas Educational Readings in Moscow, a popular annual event organized by the Russian Orthodox Church.
- The winner of Eurovision, Israeli Netta Barzilai, known as Netta, has joined a number of artists filming their music videos in Kyiv.
- New issue of the Kyiv Post is out and available online.
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