Assessment of the river ports of Ukraine regarding their logistics zones` organizational capability

Relevance in the research topic. A postwar Ukraine should restore not only its political and economic components, but the infrastructure as well. Logistics zones organization at territories attractive by the existing transport infrastructure and geographical location hypothetically hold the attention. In this aspect, the most profitable territories are river ports. It is a significant factor, as it will affect substantially the further development of river logistics, being a promising task for the future. Problem statement. The relevance in the research topic determines researchers` efforts to assess river ports` technical and technological facilities, their geographical location and connection to the mainland transport infrastructure. This is an urgent need to analyze organizational capability of river ports` logistics zones, which are the core elements of the country's logistics infrastructure. Analysis of recent research and publications. The issue of the development of the logistics infrastructure of Ukraine as the aspect of plan implementation to join the European Union is gaining more and more importance. The river infrastructure is also not left out of researchers' attention. Ukrainian scholars like Hurii N., Horodova A., Odynets T., Irtyshcheva I., Boyko Y., Okorokova A., Vernyhora R., Tsukrova P., Slipenko A., Manaenko I., Tymoshchuk O., Horoshko K., Shakhova A. and others devoted their scientific publications to river infrastructure and river transport research, development of river industry capacity. Detailed information analysis of the theme made by the domestic scholars made it possible to ascertain that now no one pays attention to the river ports` development issue through their logistics zones organization. It requires thorough research. Unsolved parts of the general problem. Now the theme regarding logistics zones organization based on the existing river infrastructure remain unexplored. Study task and objective. The study objective was to provide comprehensive assessment of the river ports of Ukraine as for the possibility to start up logistics zones. To achieve it the following tasks have been solved: currently operating river ports have been found out; port selection criteria have been substantiated; the most suitable river ports for the logistics zones organization have been determined. Research method and methodology. While doing the research, general scientific (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, group analysis) and special (abstraction, etc.) methods of studying economic phenomena and processes have been used. The main material (study results). A study of actual operational capacity of the existing river ports, unloading terminals and berths, their topological interconnection taking into account the spatial factor has been carried out. An expert survey in the field of logistics, in particular, river logistics has been conducted. Key assessment criteria to select ports to start up logistics zones inside the area or nearby have been proved. The proposed assessment criteria have been applied to select seven river ports as potentially suitable for the organization of logistics zones inside the area or nearby. It has been assumed that the logistics zones could become the core elements to form regional distribution logistics centers or regional logistics clusters. Conclusions. The actual number of currently operating river ports, unloading terminals and berths in the general river infrastructure of Ukraine has been found out. Five criteria have been proved and proposed to select the most suitable river ports to start up the logistics zones, namely port capacity and territory, port size length, berth depth and land transport network accessibility. The following river ports have been recommended to choose to start up working logistics zones: Izmail, Reni, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Dnipro and Novokakhovka. The selected river ports are topologically linked to the regions and could be integrated into the regional distribution logistics centers.