Ukraine aims for OECD membership in 2026, says country's PM
Ukraine plans to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2026.
Source: Shmyhal at an OECD ministerial meeting on 3 June 2025
Quote from Shmyhal: "Despite the war, Ukraine continues to implement reforms across all sectors to strengthen the economy and lay the foundation for joining the club of developed nations. We expect to join the OECD next year."
Details: Shmyhal noted that the OECD launched a programme for Ukraine two years ago to support its accession.
"Over the past two years, we've held 23 events with the OECD and adopted eight legal instruments," he added. "We established anti-corruption infrastructure and implemented the State Anti-Corruption Programme, which aligns 80% with OECD standards."
Shmyhal highlighted progress in digitalisation, deregulation and alignment with OECD standards in privatisation and corporatisation.
He cited the OECD's 2025 Economic Survey of Ukraine, which noted positive reform trends in public investment management and investment climate, as well as the Integrity Review, which recognised Ukraine's anti-corruption efforts.
Quote: "As a result of our reforms, everyday corruption experienced by Ukrainians has fallen from 70% to 15% in recent years. This shift marks a transition from a post-Soviet to a European development model."
Background: The OECD has stated that Ukraine's recovery and investment growth depend on strengthening the rule of law, easing regulatory burdens, promoting competition and innovation, as well as improving access to finance.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Missouri's Historic Abortion Victory Is Crumbling Before Our Eyes
Just a few months ago, Missouri voters approved a ballot measure to protect abortion rights. That measure, known as Amendment 3, added a 'reproductive freedom' amendment to the state constitution. It was crafted to offer stronger legal protections for abortion than existed under Roe v. Wade, according to campaigners, and to end the state's near-total abortion ban, which had been triggered by the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe. Those who voted for it believed that the amendment would allow them to override such past anti-abortion court rulings and to block anti-abortion lawmakers' future efforts—in essence, to reclaim their own rights and political voice. But as of May 27, by way of a two-page order from the state's Supreme Court, the abortion ban voters had been told they defeated was back. The ruling came as a 'surprise' to pro-choice and anti-abortion groups alike, the Missouri Independent reported this week. With it, the Supreme Court of Missouri has effectively allowed the state to enforce a raft of anti-abortion laws that had been challenged by two Planned Parenthood affiliates, which argued that such laws now violated the state constitution, thanks to Amendment 3. After last week's ruling, Planned Parenthood health centers in the state—Missouri's only abortion clinics—canceled upcoming appointments and advised patients that they could instead go to neighboring Kansas or Illinois, where abortion is legal. For now, those patients, and any Missourian who needs an abortion, have found themselves right back where they would have been had Amendment 3 never been on the ballot. The sudden loss of abortion access is an inarguable blow for Missouri's reproductive rights movement. But it's also something more troubling: a sign of flaws in the post-Roe strategy chosen by large national reproductive rights groups like Planned Parenthood and state chapters and affiliates of such groups, including the ACLU and Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL). For these groups, abortion rights ballot measures have been seen as a path forward in a hostile legal environment, a way to restore access without relying on the courts. Campaigns would go direct to the people, giving energized supporters a tangible goal to work toward, along with some optimism, amid an otherwise crushing assault on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy. The speed with which Missouri's ballot measure has gone from being a historic victory to yet another legal battle reveals that such election night wins may prove to be far more qualified and complicated to hold onto than campaigners had hoped. For some advocates in Missouri who had worked on Amendment 3, however, there was nothing all that surprising in the state Supreme Court's ruling. They saw it as a reality check. 'There is no way to responsibly sugarcoat what's playing out in the state,' the What's Next for Missouri coalition told me in a statement from the group. The coalition was founded by longtime Missouri reproductive justice advocates, as well as former staff of Planned Parenthood affiliates in Missouri who quit over their concerns about the ballot measure. 'Amendment 3 was a limited and symbolic win,' the coalition said. 'In reality, it has failed to protect pregnant people's bodily autonomy. Inaccessible abortion is just the tip of the iceberg.' Voters in Missouri may have declared that abortion was their constitutional right, but abortion was not going to return overnight to Missouri. In November, state Attorney General Andrew Bailey offered his legal opinion on which anti-abortion laws might still be enforceable. After stating that Amendment 3 'just barely' won by a 'tight margin,' he opined that 'the result may be very different if a future constitutional amendment is put up for a vote,' and detailed circumstances in which he believed some of the laws could still be enforced. In other words, he was not going to accept that Amendment 3 automatically invalidated state anti-abortion laws—and to be fair, the Amendment 3 campaign seems to have anticipated just such a reaction. Not long after the election, the two Planned Parenthood affiliates that have health centers in Missouri challenged many of those laws as 'presumptively unconstitutional,' citing Amendment 3. Their petition, filed in the circuit court of Jackson County by Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers-Missouri, also requested that the court temporarily block such laws while the case played out. That included the total abortion ban triggered after Roe, as well as laws meant to restrict abortion access even if it were not technically banned, such as mandatory waiting periods and mandatory ultrasounds. In a pair of rulings in December and February, Judge Jerri Zhang granted the affiliates' request for a temporary injunction on most of those laws, after which Planned Parenthood clinics in Missouri began to offer abortion again, with significant limits: only procedural abortion up to 12 or 13 weeks, no medication abortion, in just three clinics across the entire state, operating at limited capacity. Other restrictions remained, including some that were not part of Planned Parenthood's challenge. Mandatory parental involvement laws were later challenged by the practical abortion support organization Right By You, in April. There were also restrictions that Amendment 3 did not touch: The ballot measure allows for abortion to be banned past fetal viability, the legal line after which a fetus is thought to be able to survive independently. This means that people having later abortions were left out of the promises of Amendment 3 from the start. Missouri Attorney General Bailey appealed Judge Zhang's decision, seeking to block abortion in the state during the court challenge—an appeal enabled by a new law giving the state attorney such power to sue to halt injunctions, signed just days before. Meanwhile, the Missouri General Assembly voted to put a new abortion ban on the ballot, an effort to overturn Amendment 3. The constitutional right protecting abortion that voters believed they had succeeded in installing was being rapidly undermined across multiple fronts—by the state attorney general, in the courts, and in the legislature. This legal undermining depends in part on voters not knowing that it's even happening. The proposed anti-abortion ballot measure language did not refer to Amendment 3, nor to banning abortion, hiding its ban behind claims of ensuring women's 'safety during abortions.' For good measure, it added a ban on gender-affirming care for minors—care that is currently banned in the state. Democrats in the state legislature had tried to block the anti-abortion ballot measure proposal from advancing, but Republicans broke their filibuster with 'a rare procedural maneuver to shut down debate and force a vote on a measure that would repeal Amendment 3,' as St. Louis Public Radio reported. Amendment 3 campaign leaders forcefully denounced both the new ballot measure and the legislature's underhanded attempt to reverse the will of Missouri voters. 'This deceptive amendment is a trojan horse to reinstate Missouri's total abortion ban,' Tori Schafer, director of policy and campaigns at the ACLU of Missouri, said in a statement. At protests on the steps of the state Capitol in Jefferson City, Amendment 3 supporters were now fighting to hang onto their victory, as they have had to many times this session. 'This past November, more than 1.5 million Missourians made their voices heard at the ballot box,' Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, said. 'Missourians are used to fighting back and are prepared to keep showing up.' Two weeks later, abortion access in the state would be all but nonexistent again, after Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Russell ordered Judge Zhang to vacate her temporary injunction and to reevaluate the Planned Parenthood affiliates' request, this time using a stricter standard. The ACLU of Missouri, which is co-counsel in the legal challenge, told The New Republic that it had 'immediately' responded to the order by sending correspondence to the court, 'highlighting that our arguments met this standard.' Tom Bastian, ACLU of Missouri director of communications, added that while the group 'can't predict when the court will act, we anticipate new orders … granting the preliminary injunctions blocking the ban and restrictions, once again allowing Missourians access to abortion care.' For now, then, those Missourians will be doing what they did before election night, before Dobbs: going out of state or self-managing their abortion with pills. In this, the reality for abortion in Missouri looks a lot like it did back when the near-total ban passed. The difference is that now more than $30 million has been spent on a ballot measure meant to reverse that ban. As the legal scholar Mary Ziegler pointed out this week, it is possible that Missourians' abortion rights will prevail, that Planned Parenthood will get its injunction, or even that the new anti-abortion ballot measure may fail. However, as she wrote, 'what is happening in Missouri is still a sign about the limits of ballot measures.' Advocates in other states should be asking: What is such a 'win' worth? The legal battle over Amendment 3 is nothing new, as Planned Parenthood's initial filing in this legal challenge acknowledged. 'The State of Missouri has spent decades attempting to eliminate or severely reduce abortion access,' its petition stated. 'This means that Plaintiffs have spent decades challenging these laws.' The lengths that Missouri lawmakers have been willing to go since the election, unfortunately, indicate that this is not a fair fight in fair courts. 'It's time for simple honesty,' What's Next said to me this week. People will have unreliable and irregular access to abortion 'until we shift power away from fascist politicians.' The reality is that this fight for the constitutional right to abortion was playing out at the same time that our constitutional rights were being ignored and undermined on a regular basis. Before we fundraise millions more dollars to replicate the fight in other states—fundraising that will be justified as 'restoring' access to abortion by making it a right—we might consider other, more immediate ways to give people what they need. That money might be better spent on paying for actual abortions, as abortion funds across the country do, helping people in the many states with abortion bans to access care. In a legal system that cannot be counted upon, there may be no more direct way of supporting a fundamental right.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
A US veteran who fought in Ukraine says drones are 'horrendous' for soldiers' morale
A US veteran who fought in Ukraine said that the scale of drones in the war is terrible for troops' morale, and that soldiers sometimes won't see a drone coming in clear blue skies before it kills them. Carl Larson, an Iraq veteran who was born in Seattle and served in Ukraine's International Legion, said that the huge presence of drones is "a horrendous detriment to morale." "I can't speak for the Russian side, but on the Ukrainian side, it's incredibly corrosive to your ability to conduct combat operations," he said at a drone conference last week. "You can't leave your blindage, your bunker, at least not during the day," he added. Larson said that "anyone who's been under artillery barrage knows how negative that is to your mental well-being and how many soldiers, seemingly strong-minded soldiers, can't handle that sort of stress." He also said he lost "good friends" in Ukraine "that died from having a grenade explode next to them out of nowhere, under a blue sky, you couldn't even hear it. Bang, they're dead." 'Undetectable' fiberoptic drones Larson said that some drone types, especially the fiberoptic drones that both Russia and Ukraine are now using, are "damn near undetectable, they come in hot at over a hundred miles an hour." Fiberoptic drones typically can't be jammed, unlike more classic drone types, and Larson said that if soldiers can't take them down with more traditional means, like guns, then "it's horrible." Larson, who served as a combat engineer in Iraq, was speaking at Drone Summit 2025, a gathering of more than 100 defense companies, defense ministers, and military officials in NATO member state Latvia. He's no longer with the International Legion, but is still helping Ukraine, including as the executive director of Defense Tech for Ukraine, a group that works to get drones and other technology to Ukrainian soldiers. He said at the summit: "I believe that Ukrainians are fighting for all of us." Larson's comments mirror those made by Ukrainian soldiers and other Western veterans who have taken part in the fighting. A Ukrainian drone operator told BI earlier this year that there are so many drones in the sky that soldiers often can't tell who they belong to. And the sheer number of drones means soldiers need to find ways to stay safe, including building fake positions and digging trenches to hide in. Long-term impact Drones are so common in Ukraine that they've removed the lifesaving window to rescue injured soldiers, called the "golden hour," another US veteran, who trains troops in Ukraine, previously told BI. They have also fundamentally changed military tactics in Ukraine, because they remove lots of the element of surprise, the veteran, who goes by the call sign Jackie, said. Drones have been used to scan the battlefield and gather intelligence to direct other weaponry, and to launch attacks themselves on soldiers and other targets. They can also be equipped with bombs and grenade launchers, as well as machine guns. Ukraine and Russia are in a desperate race to develop better and more drones than each other, with Ukraine increasingly relying on drones as it suffers shortages of other weapons from its allies. In contrast, it can make most of the drones it uses itself. In his comments, Larson talked about the long-term mental toll of things like drone warfare on those in combat. He said that there are some groups that do "very good work" with demobilized Ukrainian soldiers to combat PTSD and work on mental and physical rehabilitation and employment prospects. "It's really challenging," he said.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Ukraine takes the war to Russia — have the nukes launched yet?
If you believe Russia's apologists, then Ukraine, hot off bold strikes on military airfields spanning Russia and the Kerch Strait Bridge in Crimea, is recklessly risking giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a reason to go nuclear. The notion is utter nonsense. Ukraine, by taking the war to Russia, is just embracing a U.S. Army saying: 'Keep on keeping on.' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not provoking World War III but defending his country by striking legitimate Russian targets and weapons systems. In doing so, Zelensky is reminding the West that Ukraine remains resilient. They are not losing; they are very much still in the game. As Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies described the situation, 'Those who have been saying Putin is winning are wrong. The Ukrainians are holding their own, even though the support they've been receiving from the United States and other free nations has been woefully insufficient.' Ukraine keeps on keeping on. Adversity brings that out of you. This was evident early in the war when Zelensky refused to be evacuated from Kyiv by the U.S., instead stating, 'The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.' Despite Vice President J.D. Vance and President Trump's public chiding of Zelensky in February, telling him 'you don't have the cards,' he did have them. He had been holding them close to the vest for nearly a year. On Sunday, Zelensky's special operators delivered two stunning blows to the Kremlin. Ukrainian attack drones, concealed in Russian cargo trucks, destroyed 34 percent of the Russian strategic bomber fleet stationed at four airbases: Belaya, Olenya, Dyagilevo, and Ivanovo. All of these were launch sites for cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian cities. Then on Tuesday, the Security Service of Ukraine announced it had struck the Russian Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia's Krasnodar Krai region. 'The underwater supports of the piers were severely damaged at the bottom level — 1,100 kg of explosives in TNT equivalent contributed to this,' the service announced. 'In fact, the bridge is in a state of emergency.' The bridge has since reopened, but the message was delivered and received. Zelensky has no intention of capitulating to the Kremlin. Nor is Ukraine going to allow Russia's nuclear bluffing to deter it. Team Trump needs to be sending the same message and not leaving Europe to go it alone. On Tuesday, the Pentagon abruptly announced that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would neither attend nor remotely participate in the 57-member Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels. The group has collectively provided Ukraine with over $126 billion in weapons and military assistance, including $66.5 billion from the U.S. Then later on Tuesday, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. and Special Envoy Keith Kellogg fell back on familiar language and concerns of nuclear escalation stating, 'I'm telling you the risk levels are going way up. When you attack an opponent's part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don't know what the other side's going to do.' But Ukraine did not strike Russia's nuclear triad or threaten their national survival. They struck a cruise missile delivery system that was deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians from airfields deep within the Russian interior where Putin thought they were secure. Why is it that when Russia attacks Ukraine's 'national survival system' that Kyiv cannot strike back? Ukraine entrusted its 'national survival system' to the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 when they gave up their nuclear weapons. Russia attacked their vulnerability, Ukraine responded in kind. Russia found out 'what the other side was going to do' and now the Kremlin is crying foul. Hopefully, Trump pushed back against Moscow's nuclear bluffing during his Wednesday telephone call with Putin. Russia continues to attack while Ukraine continues to defend their country. Innovation, ingenuity, and the guts to try are leveling the playing field much to Putin's displeasure. This war cannot be contained to just within the Ukrainian borders. The Biden administration already tried that with HIMARS munitions. Sanctuary only affords opportunity for the Kremlin despite Ukraine always finding a way to overcome adversity. As the White House militarily distances itself from Ukraine and the European theater in favor of the Indo-Pacific theater, Europe is rallying to the Ukrainian cause under the leadership of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. London and Brussels understand Ukraine is only the tip of the iceberg and that more robust investment in their defense is critical to their security. As Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned, 'My own view, having dealt with him and having spent most of my life working on Russia and the Soviet Union, is Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire… As my old mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski once said, without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.' Last week, retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus warned that Putin will invade a NATO country if he is successful in Ukraine. He went on to say that Russia could launch an incursion into a Baltic state — Lithuania being most at risk — to test Western resolve or as a precursor to a wider Russian offensive. Last month, Russian forces began to reoccupy and fortify military bases along the border with NATO member Finland. The Zapad-2025 joint military exercise with Belarus and Russia is a potential rehearsal for an invasion scenario in the Suwałki Gap — a 40 mile wide stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania that separates Russian-controlled Kaliningrad from Belarus. If Russia were to occupy the gap, it would divide and isolate the Baltic States from NATO. Germany recognized the threat, and deployed a tank brigade to Lithuania in May. Russia is not interested in a peaceful outcome in Ukraine. On Tuesday, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory. 'Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance,' he wrote. 'Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.' Zelensky and his army are in the way of Putin's desired destiny. Europe is finally coming around to recognizing that fact. No amount of Russian whining and bluffing about Ukraine provoking a nuclear war should stop London and Brussels from ensuring Zelensky soundly defeats Putin in Ukraine. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.
