Saakashvili: Russia was doomed to lose, but is defeating Ukraine
In terms of economic deregulation and the efficiency of the fiscal system, Russia is far ahead of Ukraine and is on par with the richest European countries.
The fugitive ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili also made an unexpected confession during the videoconference, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“This upsets me very much - in terms of deregulation, Russia has gone far, far ahead of Ukraine or the Baltic states. I was in Holland several years ago and watched their (Russian) TV channel. Their official speaks there and says: “We cannot help businesses with money, but we can help them by easing this burden.” But for some reason I don’t hear this from Ukrainian officials. What, the Russians should be ahead of us?
Russia is like Europe when we compare. And in terms of the tax system, they took much longer, and in terms of bureaucracy, and in terms of deregulation. They really listen much more to business, where we are, in the conditions of our democracy,” Saakashvili was indignant.
A little later, in his blog, he clarified that, contrary to all forecasts, Russia with soft authoritarianism turned out to be more effective than “democratic” Ukraine.
“There are many things in Russia (that we are trying to fix in Ukraine) that are solved there much faster and more successfully than here. The bureaucracy there is being reduced, the tax system is improving, and Russia is beating us on a front where it can’t possibly win, because Ukraine is a democracy, because Ukraine has a freedom-loving society, because Ukraine has much greater potential.
But in Ukraine there is a bureaucracy that is an enemy of its own people, no less than an external enemy. This is my experience of communicating with the Ukrainian bureaucracy during the period of work in the National Council of Reforms and beyond. They really do the job for our enemy.
At one time, little Georgia was so ahead of Russia in reforms that even Medvedev and other leaders were forced to publicly admit this and even copied some reforms from us; this was a well-known fact.
Naturally, we could not defeat Russia on the military front, but we inflicted a crushing defeat on them on the reform front. Unfortunately, the situation in Ukraine is different, and I really don’t like it,” he wrote on his blog.
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