Ukraine update: Czech foreign minister meets Ukraine's president Zelensky

The Plzeň Region has received 27 pallets of humanitarian aid from Germany to be sent to Ukraine. The aid will be sent to the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in Ukraine, which Plzeň has been cooperating with since April.
The aid consists of healthcare material, drugs, electronics, fridges, wash machines, clothes and long-lasting food items worth about 600,000 crowns, which has been donated by four German firms (Schierer, Zitzmann, Kappenberger und Braun, and Wolf) from the Bavarian town of Chram.
Plzeň-based company GO! Express & Logistic will handle the shipment of aid from the Czech Republic to Ukraine.

The Czech Republic has now granted temporary protection visas to more than 399,000 Ukrainian refugees since the war in Ukraine started in February, with an additional 864 visas issued on Friday, reports the Interior Ministry.
The exact number of refugees currently in the country is not known, as some have left for other countries or returned to Ukraine. In June, estimates pegged the number of Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic at 280,000-300,000.
The temporary protection visas granted by the Czech Republic entitle refugees to stay in the country for up to one year, with access to public healthcare, education, and the local labor market.

The Czech Financial Analytical Office (FAÚ) has frozen Russian property worth almost CZK 10 billion since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, FAÚ head Jiří Hylmar said in an interview with the server Seznam Zprávy.
Along with money in bank accounts, the freeze also applies to the real estate of the people on the EU sanction list and their shares in companies.
The FAÚ has not yet faced any lawsuit in connection with the freezing of the Russians' property. However, administrative proceedings are still underway in some freezing cases, and it is hard to say when they will end, Hylmar said.

Thousands of Ukrainians in the Czech Republic will lose the automatic right to state health insurance in the weeks to come and will have to contact their health insurance company.
These people will have to prove their right to health insurance covered by the state again or someone else will have to pay it. This will apply to some 215,000 refugees from Ukraine insured with the VZP, according to VZP board chairman Tom Philipp.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, some 350,000 Ukrainian refugees who fled to the Czech Republic have registered with the VZP. Some 215,000 of them are adults aged from 18 to 65 who will have to turn to the health insurance company again. VZP expects part of them to return to Ukraine.
Some 43,000 refugees insured with the VZP have already found jobs in the Czech Republic and consequently, their employers pay health insurance for them or they pay it themselves if they work as self-employed.
VZP has prepared an online form to be filled in on the website pomocukrajine.vzp.cz for those who are obliged to contact their insurer.

One-fifth of Ukrainian secondary school students who came to the Czech Republic with their parents after the Russian invasion started in February did not either attend Czech schools in person or join online instruction from Ukraine in June, a survey has shown.
Three percent of Ukrainian children did not attend elementary schools and 69 percent of preschool children did not attend kindergartens.
The respondents stated that enrolling their children in Czech schools was not possible due to the refusal of Czech schools and kindergartens to admit them, small capacities, and lack of information.

State-owned ČD Cargo sends out 13 trains a week, most often transporting grain or iron ore, economic daily E15 reported.
Since the beginning of the war, ČD Cargo has transported over 2.5 million tons of goods from Ukraine.
In a year-on-year comparison, this is half a million tons more.
Ukraine has 20 million tons of grain that need to be traded. The Russians, on the other hand, have blocked ports, destroyed railways and roads, and stolen agricultural products in the occupied territories. According to Ukrainian sources, more than half a million tons of grain have already disappeared.
The Czech government wants to play an important role in the mass transportation of local products, directing them to western ports.