Defense, Economy Ministries to work on protecting logistics centers
Ukraine's Defense Ministry and Economy, Environment and Agriculture Ministry are to work on protecting logistics centers critical to the economy, EVA and Varus co-owner Ruslan Shostak said on Facebook following a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and retail industry representatives.
"The recent meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and retail representatives was extremely substantive. And most importantly, it already produced concrete decisions and concrete instructions," he wrote.
Among the proposals discussed was expanding preferential lending (5-7-9%) for large businesses affected by Russian strikes, according to Shostak.
"When a warehouse or distribution center worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias is destroyed overnight, this isn't just about one company's losses anymore. It sets off a chain reaction: suppliers, payments, salaries, inventory, consumption, taxes. That's exactly what the aggressor is going for — destroying not just the facility, but the economic ties around it. So access to fast recovery tools for large, systemically important businesses is a matter of economic resilience," he said.
Protecting logistics hubs, which are "life-support infrastructure for the country," is critical for the economy, according to Shostak.
"One destroyed distribution center can halt supply to hundreds of stores and wipe out hundreds of millions of hryvnias' worth of inventory. Following the meeting, Ukraine's Defense Ministry and the Economy, Environment and Agriculture Ministry are to work on protecting logistics centers critical to the economy. This is an important shift in the state's approach to logistics infrastructure," Shostak wrote.
The meeting also separately discussed deregulating the recovery process for distribution complexes, he said.
"It's absurd that Russia can destroy a distribution center in a matter of minutes, while Ukrainian businesses then need months to go through all the procedures to rebuild it. Today, the speed of infrastructure recovery isn't a bureaucratic issue — it's a matter of the country's economic resilience," Shostak said.
As a backup solution, businesses also proposed creating customs warehouses in EU border countries to store goods destined for Ukraine.