Series: Ukraine, Atlas shrugs. Incredibly abundant and awakening Philosopher and historian Giambattista Vico, who was part of the Italian Enlightenment, was arguably the first to state that history does not advance linearly driven by progress but develops in repeating cycles. The Chalcolithic Age (the name is made from two Greek words, "khalkos" and "lithos", meaning copper and stone) about 10,000 years ago marks the beginning of the use of metalwork technology along with stone tools. Copper was one of the first metals humans mastered , shaping coins, jewellery, tools and weaponry that fuelled societal advancement. It looks like the New Copper Age might be coming. According to estimates , Copper could become the “Next oil”  in the next decade or two. Nearly 150 copper occurrences exist  in the Rivne, Zhytomyr, and Volyn regions. It is regarded that Ukraine has about 30 million tonnes of copper in measured and indicated resources. From 2017 to 2021, local and foreign investors were interested in copper mining projects in Ukraine, but political instability, corruption, and Russian aggression made them impossible to implement. Once the Russian war ends and the rule of law inevitably prevails in Ukraine, developing these resources will become an attractive investment.

To paraphrase German theologian  Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller,   “First they came for Georgians, and I did not speak out because it seemed far away.… Then they came for Ukrainians, and I did not speak out because I didn’t want to wake up. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak out for me…” One of the CIA Principles of Intelligence Analysis is: “understand the full picture.” Last month's seemingly unrelated events suggest that things are going fast in the very wrong direction: Georgia is probably lost for the democratic world  after Russia-rigged elections. Four to six brigades of North Korean troops arrived in Europe and fight Ukrainians just a few days away of forced march to Warsaw or Vilnius. Russian-Iranian UAVs are taping the Lithuanian, Romanian and Polish airspace to target critical infrastructure. Russia has been caught in preparing to place explosive packages to blast civil aeroplanes flying over Europe and the US . Ukraine gets exhausted from almost three years of fighting one-on-one a times bigger Russian villain. Human capital suffers the most,  as 25% (twenty-five per cent!) of the population is lost over the last decade. With the growing self-centrism of the US following the recent elections, “objects in a mirror might be closer than they appear”, and perils are coming closer to everyone's home in Europe. Since February 2022, financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine has cost the average EU/UK citizen two cups of coffee per month.  This  is catastrophically insufficient for Ukraine to keep the frontline, not to mention end the war. Attempts to appease Russia led only to tragedies in the past. Don't say later that we didn’t warn you.

The Ukrainian Coordination Centre for Cybersecurity (NCCC), a critical ad-hoc commission for coordination and control in the field of cybersecurity, banned the installation and use of Telegram on the official devices of government officials , military personnel, employees of the security and defence sector, as well as enterprises operating critical infrastructure. There is evidence that Russian special services have access to the personal correspondence of Telegram users, even deleted messages, as well as their personal data. Telegram is actively used by Russia for cyberattacks, spreading phishing and malware, establishing the geolocation of users, geolocation targets for missile strikes, etc. An illustrative story happened meanwhile with a sensitive Telegram chatbot of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine , “Reserve+”, used to exchange data between recruits and the recruitment centre of the Ministry of Defence. The ministry started this tool but abandoned it over time, deleted the account, and left the URL "@reserveplusbot" behind. Immediately, ‘unknown hackers’ took advantage of this and took control of the chatbot. Pretending to be representatives of “Reserve+”, the fraudsters sent messages to recruits calling to install special software. It infected the computers and smartphones with Meduza Stealer malware . This virus can steal personal data from devices, analyse user activity in browsers and carry out attacks based on collected information. Telegram is reported to have been suspiciously slow in closing the fictitious account. Given the scale of use of the application “Reserve+” and the database available on the darknet, the number of victims can be conservatively measured in thousands.

Fifty of Ukraine's largest private companies have invested over Eur 5 billion in their development  since the full-scale Russian invasion. DTEK, Metinvest and MHP are the top three. Russia's invasion led to an avalanche-like decline in FDI inflows from $8 billion in 2021 to $221 million in 2022. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, last year, FDI rebounded to $4.8 billion, with most of this money reinvested by businesses already operating in the country. FDI per capita in Ukraine remains at the lowest level  among Eastern European countries, as Ukraine’s foreign investment policy regime has been less liberalised than of its regional peers. The preconditions for FDI acceleration are the war's end, structural reforms, and NATO/EU security guarantees. While there is a high level of uncertainty about the first and the last, Ukraine has made meaningful progress in reforms over the previous ten years.

In September, the Strategic Investment Council of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine  approved the outline of the Project Portfolio for Public Investment. The portfolio includes 750 healthcare, education, transport, and energy investment projects worth over $55 billion. In 2025, the projects will attract around $5,6 billion, including about $4 billion of grants, state-backed loans, and guarantees from international financial organisations and donors. The major financial providers will be the EIB, EBRD, IBRD and foreign governments. The investment projects will be monitored through the publicly available integrated management system DREAM  to ensure compliance and integrity during the selection, preparation and implementation. Entrypoint's team is proud to have been already engaged in preparing several reconstruction projects in construction and energy.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector push the country to accelerate its transition to green and distributed energy solutions. The destruction of nearly 9 GW, or almost half of the electricity generation, opened the way to change the conventional post-soviet generation mix. In August, the Ukrainian Government approved the plan  to set out the renewable energy development trajectories by sector until 2030. According to the plan, the share of renewable energy in gross energy consumption in 2030 will be 27%. Ukraine intends to switch from coal-powered thermal plants to a mix of renewables like wind, solar, and biofuels. A network of smaller gas-fired turbines will also be installed, less vulnerable to attack and capable of balancing daily peaks and valleys in electricity demand. In June, DTEK RES Group received technical conditions for connecting 650 MW of Poltava WPP and intends to invest there around one billion US dollars. In June, the Ukrainian group “OKKO” secured the EBRD's loan of €60 million for constructing a biofuel plant and the World Bank’s financing for building a 150 MW wind farm in Western Ukraine. Recently, the EBRD approved funding for the German GOLDBECK SOLAR , which targets the development of up to 500 MW of renewable projects in Ukraine. German company Notus Energy continues constructing a 300 MW wind farm in the Odessa region, with the first operational stage in 2025. After the government’s plans are implemented, “Ukraine will introduce a low-carbon energy system before many European countries,” said Kudritskiy, president of the national distribution grid, quoted by the WP.

The Ukrainian foreign trade through the Black Sea ports is gaining momentum despite the ongoing war and Russian efforts to undermine it. In the first seven months of this year, Ukraine's seaports handled nearly 60 million tonnes of cargo , almost as much as in 2023. In July 2024, there was a significant surge in cargo turnover, with 7 million tonnes being transshipped, a figure that is 2.2 times higher than in 2023. This increase is a promising sign for the future of Ukrainian foreign trade. 4.2 million tonnes of agricultural products were exported to 46 countries. In 2021, before the Russian full-scale invasion, Ukrainian ports handled over 153 million tonnes of cargo: 118 million tonnes of exports and 24 million tonnes of imports; the rest was transit and cabotage. The war's impact on businesses, Russian blocage, and attacks on ships and Ukrainian transhipment terminals halved these volumes in 2022 and 2023 to 60 million tonnes annually. Many Ukrainian agribusinesses, including some of our clients, have had a painful season of 2022/2023. High logistic costs due to disruptions in maritime trade made their margins slim, if not negative. According to the benchmarking , key crops like corn and wheat had negative returns, while oilseeds provided some profitability.