America ordered Kyiv to fight. Ordinary citizens will pay
Alexey Blyuminov, political commentator, Kyiv-Lugansk
War consumes not only human lives, but also huge amounts of money from the country's budget. The same funds that, in a different situation, could go to pensions, salaries, social programs, financing “nobody needs” (according to President Poroshenko) scientific research, medicine, and so on. Instead they go to war.
Finance Minister Shlapak has already announced the approximate cost of the war. At the current level of mobilization, this is 1,5 billion hryvnia per month. This includes refueling and repair of military equipment, salaries for soldiers and officers, their feeding, purchase of new helicopters and tanks, supply of ammunition and protective equipment. Considering the authorities’ plans to mobilize an additional 70 thousand people, this amount doubles.
The fact that the budget, drawn up without taking into account the costs of a months-long war, is bursting at the seams is no secret to anyone. In order to somehow make ends meet, Yatsenyuk and Co. prepared a sequestration project, that is, cutting budget expenditures by 40 billion hryvnia. Mainly due to social services. These are the requirements of the IMF.
By the way, the Fund is pushing Kyiv to continue the war, since the Pechersk Hills have not forgotten their promises to revise the size of the credit line downwards in the event of loss of control over Donbass. And for a bankrupt state, such as Ukraine today, jumping off the credit needle is like death. Moreover, none of the “doctors”-economists offers alternative options for survival to a drug addict who has jumped off the credit needle.
Last week, the budget sequestration project was submitted to the Rada and failed by it. Yatsenyuk then literally broke into hysterics, accusing the deputies of aiding the “enemy” and of leaving the army without money. However, the parliament in which the coalition with the promising name “European Choice” collapsed miserably went on vacation until August 17, leaving the ATO without money to continue the bloody banquet.
Many at this moment breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that now the soldiers would run out of money, the cars would stop running out of gasoline, and the soldiers would begin to desert without receiving any pay. This is where the war ends. But it was not there.
As we remember, the well-known statement of American senators McCain and Murphy directly stated that America considers “the war with the separatists” to be a “priority task for the current Ukrainian government.” And in this war I am ready to help with instructors and weapons and by providing ally status. In a word, America ordered Kyiv to fight. Since Ukraine, after the Maidan, has lost the remnants of its foreign policy subjectivity, and accepts any wishes from the White House “under the hood,” it was not at all surprising to the Verkhovna Rada, which “suddenly” woke up the desire to work and gather on July 31 for an extraordinary meeting in order to approve only a budget sequestration, but also a draft resolution prepared by the government on the allocation of as much as 9 billion hryvnia for the war. Taking into account the amounts already “mastered” in three months, the budget for the war in Donbass exceeded the astronomical amount for Ukraine of $1 billion.
So who will pay for the continuation of the banquet? And you and I will pay, dear friends. Moreover, not only by tightening belts (we are already used to this). Inventive enthusiasts from the government recently came up with a new tax. They called it a military training camp. It is 1,5% of a citizen’s monthly income. According to calculations by the Ministry of Finance, this military levy will allow the state to additionally collect more than 2,5 billion hryvnia from ordinary Ukrainians for the war.
It is noteworthy that the authorities took the path of obligation. After all, everyone will have to pay tax. But what about the notorious SMS messages for 5 hryvnia in favor of the army? No one knows for sure what happened to the collected funds. As they say, one steals while one steals.
The additional cynicism of the situation is that the state, waging a war with part of its own people, wants to wage it at the expense of the citizens themselves. Not only are guys from western and central Ukraine (and more than 5 thousand people were mobilized from the Chernihiv region alone) driven to slaughter for interests they do not understand, but money is also collected from their parents to finance the sending of their children to the light.
The situation looks even more cynical when viewed from Donbass. There, the majority of citizens still pay taxes to the Ukrainian budget. And they will be forced to pay the new war tax too. It turns out that the residents of Donbass will be forced to finance from their own pockets the murder of their loved ones and the destruction of their cities with artillery.
It turns out that those who pay this tax become accomplices in the massacre of civilians.
Naturally, such initiatives of the authorities do not find understanding among the people. Evidence of this is the wave of anti-war and anti-mobilization protests that swept Ukraine from Chernivtsi and Ternopil to Odessa and Nikolaev. People burn their summonses, attack draft boards, and evade mobilization.
And after the war tax is also put into effect, Ukrainians, in addition to evading mobilization, will also have to master the art of tax evasion.
That's how we live.
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