At a session at the end of this week, the Zakarpattia Regional Council decided to increase the charter capital of the Uzhgorod airport located near the border with the EU by UAH 26 million to resume its work without waiting for the end of the war.

"The funding for the Uzhgorod airport has been significantly increased… in order to carry out the necessary procedures, obtain permits, build the necessary buildings and, finally, start earning, and not count losses," Volodymyr Chubirko, head of the Zakarpattia Regional Council, wrote on Facebook.

"The former drawback – the runway, which starts abroad, has become its benefit. We must use it," he said.

The Uzhgorod international airport is located in a mountainous area in such a way that the threshold of the runway 10 is located a few hundred meters from the Ukrainian-Slovak border. Therefore, Slovak airspace is used for instrument landings at this aerodrome.

Ukraine and Slovakia signed an intergovernmental agreement in September 2020, and a year later the airport accepted the first flight using a certain part of the Slovak airspace.

Chubirko, quoted by local media, expressed confidence that the airport will be launched "in a month or two", and Ukrainian companies based in Europe today will use it.