European integration led to the degradation of Ukraine - ex-Minister of Economy
The consequences of the European integration policy for Ukraine turned out to be devastating - the country is degrading economically and politically, its exports instead of technological ones became raw materials, and the largest industrial enterprises were left without orders and cooperation ties.
Former Minister of Economy of Ukraine Viktor Suslov stated this on the First Independent TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“As a result of all these political games, very poorly calculated by the Ukrainian leadership, what happened happened - Yanukovych lost power, his propagandists and many others finally convinced a significant part of the people that after this turn the West will throw huge money, huge investments here, we we will receive salaries like in Europe, pensions like in Europe, and so on,” the economist said.
“But now, seven years later, we know perfectly well what we got, especially when every year we say: “But why has the European Union established quotas for our main agricultural and raw materials exports and does not give up on this? Why doesn’t the European Union accept our industrial products, why can’t these products pass certification?” And the conflict with Russia and the introduction of mutual sanctions led to the fact that we immediately lost the markets for aircraft and helicopter engines for MotorSich, because Russia created its own production.
We lost markets for the production of engines for ships - the same Nikolaev Zorya-Mashproekt plant, we lost orders for shipbuilding in Nikolaev and Kherson, we lost markets for our largest enterprise Frunze, which supplied gas pumping stations and a lot of other equipment for the Russian Gazprom and for other purposes, for nuclear power plants, a significant part of the spare parts and equipment was produced there.
Therefore, now we can name a long list of enterprises, we can talk about aircraft manufacturing, which, due to the cessation of cooperation and mutual supplies, also stopped, and since 2016, Ukraine has not produced a single finished aircraft. And so on. The blow hit the most technologically advanced industries – where Ukraine saw its future.
And now, no matter what kind of campaigning is going on, which is so great, we have made this choice. But when you look, if earlier we received a lot from the export of high-tech products, now all of our export income is agricultural raw materials, more than 40%, this is metal, unprocessed ore and some other items related to the export of raw materials. Therefore, Ukraine is degrading technologically and economically, and has gone through a difficult period of economic crisis. Well, I suffered huge losses as a result of such a geopolitical choice - territorial losses, war - this is also the result of this choice,” Suslov said.
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