LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ukraine: Western Europe
built 289 days ago
The Government of Ukraine's 12-month $605 million precautionary standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expired in March 2005, and Ukraine currently does not receive IMF financing. In Article IV Consultations, the IMF recommends fiscal discipline and structural reforms, particularly of Ukraine's pension system. In July 2005, the World Bank approved a $250 million Development Policy Loan (formerly a Programmatic Adjustment Loan) to support reforms to improve the investment climate, public administration and financial management, and social inclusion. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) project outlays more than doubled in 2005 to 530 million Euros, bringing its portfolio to 2.2 billion Euros.
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Ukraine suffered the world's worst recorded nuclear accident. On the morning of April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 80 miles north of Kiev, exploded, sending radioactive contaminants three miles up into the atmosphere and out over parts of Europe, Asia, and North America.
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Throughout the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth century, the empire architectural style came to Ukraine from the West. Modern urban planning—a grid with squares and promenades—was applied to new cities. At the beginning of twentieth century, there was a revival of national styles in architecture. A national modernism combined elements of folk architecture with new European styles. A prime exponent of this style is Vasyl' Krychevs'kyi's design of the 1909 Poltava Zemstvo Building.
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One can enter Ukraine by train [1] from any land-bordering neighbour. When coming from Europe there will be a wait at the border while the train's bogies are changed in order to adapt to different rail gauge. It is ... generally quicker and cheaper to buy a ticket to the border and then change trains, rather than wait getting through train. Generally, in Ukraine a railway travel is much cheaper than plane, and is comparable (but probably cheaper) to bus or car travel. It will take at most a whole day to ride across the country, so unless you are in hurry take a train. It's a good practice to take long-distance trains, which are much more comfortable.
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Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people there seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated 7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands.
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