Another exciting FDI city taking part in hosting EURO 2012 is Kharkiv in the north east of Ukraine. It is the second largest city in the Ukraine, with a population of around 1.5 million people.
It is a major manufacturing centre, primarily in machinery production, making turbines, tanks (the legendary T34 tank was designed here), harvesters, aircraft, and space control systems. It has 13 universities and over 150,000 students. It has 26,000 research scientists active in various research institutions including the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, the Institute of Metrology, and the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine. The city has produced 4 nobel prize winners to date.
We have met the city’s Deputy Mayor, Igor Terekhov who is a great character and super networker, just like the city itself, which is twinned with more than 20 cities across the world.
It is a football mad city, and during EURO 2012 it will be hosting three of the Group B matches between the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Portugal.