The French government will allocate 64 million euros ($72 million) to build a water purification plant in Mariupol, a city of 560,000 located 30 kilometers from the front line of Russia’s ongoing war in the Donbas.
It could be a game changer for Mariupol, which may become the first Ukrainian city to have universally drinkable tap water by 2024.
On June 13, French Ambassador Etienne de Poncins; Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian minister for the reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories; Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko signed the final agreement to build the purification station.
“By 2024, Mariupol citizens should have access to tap water as pure as in Paris,” De Poncins said.
He also hinted that another water purification plant could be built in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast, but did not specify how or when that might happen.
Financing clean water
Since the Ukrainian government lost control over the city of Donetsk in 2014, the capital of Donetsk oblast, Mariupol has sheltered over 99,000 displaced persons.
The war is not the only threat to the city: Mariupol is a stronghold of Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, whose steel plants provide jobs to its population, but also poison the air with toxic emissions and pollute the city’s water.
As in many Ukrainian cities, residents usually do not drink tap water without boiling or filtering it first.
The 80,000-square-meter water purification plant will ensure citizens have access to clean, drinkable tap water.
In July and August, a French-Ukrainian engineering company will study the feasibility of the project. In 2021, the company will draw up the plans and start the construction of the water-purification plant. The plant will start operations in 2024 at the latest.
The plant will be the largest French government project in Ukraine, Vincent Pringault, an economic service chief at the French Embassy, told the Kyiv Post.
“This is the first time France is investing so much money in such a project in Ukraine,” he said.
According to the embassy, the French government allocated 64 million euros on “very favorable conditions.” The Ukrainian government has 30 years to pay the money back, including a 10-year grace period, at an interest rate of 0.08%.
The European Investment Bank will also provide 36 million euros ($40.9 million) to modernize the water distribution network.
Overall, it will cost 100 million euros to make tap water drinkable in the city.
Strategic project
If Mariupol can get clean, drinkable tap water, other southeastern Ukrainian cities — Dnipro, Zaporizhia and Odesa, for example — can too, said Mayor Boychenko.
“Our experience could be an example of success to other cities,” he said.
Representatives of the Mariupol City Council and of the French government signed the first memorandum on the project in late October 2019, during the RE:THINK investment forum held in the city.
More than 700 guests representing companies, international financial organizations and foreign diplomatic missions came to Mariupol for the forum to discuss reinvigorating the Donbas region and promoting it as an investment destination.
The water purification plant is also a matter of enabling security in Ukraine, De Poncins said during the press conference on July 13.
This is not the only partnership between France and Ukraine.
In 2018, the French government provided 55 helicopters to Ukraine. This year, it will send 20 patrol boats to Ukraine starting on July 20, De Poncins said.
De Poncins said that all of France’s aid and investment in Ukraine is worth 1.5 billion euros and that his embassy wants aid to continue.
“We will do everything to preserve it,” he said.
