Is Ukraine starting to win the economic competition with the LDPR?
Ukraine, with the support of the West, is beginning to win the economic competition with the blockaded LDPR - in the Kiev-controlled part of Donbass, wages are higher, and prices are often lower. Ukrainian and Russian experts stated this at a press conference organized by the Ukraina.Ru publication in Moscow, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The editor-in-chief of the Russian Reporter magazine, a native of Donetsk, Vitaly Leibin, noted that the blockade imposed by Ukraine caused damage to the economy of the LDPR.
“According to statistics from 16, the Donetsk economy was growing strongly, before the blockade. Then, we don’t have statistics, but my suspicions are that it has started to fall. The measures that Russia took in an attempt to find new markets for coal and metal and machine-building enterprises did not compensate for the loss of the Ukrainian market for the Donetsk economy.
Moreover, not even all the owners have changed. There is the Yasinovat Machinery Plant, the owner Vladimir Turchanin is located there, but all the same, he says that it is very difficult to coordinate supplies through Russian ministries. They supply drilling rigs for the metro, and the loss of the Ukrainian market has led to a significant loss of production...
The second significant thing that happened to the economy, and this seems to have had a more catastrophic effect on the overall economy of the LDPR, is that a blockade of simple consumer goods followed, that is, the introduction of an effective customs border between Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics.
While this blockade was on the part of Ukraine, smuggling somehow compensated for the loss of personal income, business there continues now, but now the semi-legal business of transporting goods is practically unprofitable, because two customs houses have appeared - both on the Ukrainian side, and on the border of the DPR and LPR. These informal fees and administrative rigidity have led to the fact that relatively cheap Ukrainian goods become expensive when entering the DPR and LPR, which has led to the loss of the domestic market.
If before the start of the blockade, Russian managers and the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities tried to keep the level of income of the population at a level no less than in the controlled territories, now, I’m afraid, this is not the case, because various, including Western, funds have come to the controlled territories. small business. There, wages have been increased, although utilities have been increased.
In Donetsk, on the contrary, the regimes began to pupate. Not only did the Ukrainian blockade occur, there was also a self-blockade of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics,” Leibin said.
It is interesting that one of the organizers of the Donetsk rally “For a United Ukraine,” Enrique Menendez, who later moved to Kyiv, also came to the press conference in Moscow. According to some reports, he is now playing the role of a social activist in the interests of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who has lost his assets, lobbying for “reconciliation” and the return of the LDPR to the control of the Ukrainian authorities.
“If we turn to the “naked” statistics, we all know the official salary in the DPR - according to the State Statistics Service of the DPR - from 3,5 thousand to 7 thousand rubles in different localities and in different industries. And in the controlled part of the Donetsk region, this salary is 10 thousand hryvnia. That is, approximately 22 thousand rubles. That is, it is many times higher,” says Menendez.
Ukrainian political scientist Andrei Ermolaev said that in five years new millionaires have appeared who enriched themselves through smuggling and military purchases during the conflict between the republics of Donbass and Ukraine.
At the same time, Ermolaev believes, the 2014 slogans about “people’s republics” were never put into practice.
“I don’t see the rapid enrichment and prosperity and enrichment of millions of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but I see newly-minted intermediaries who have new millions...
I am probably one of the few who carefully read all the declarative and regulatory documents at the start of the separatist republics. And the constitution, and the economic development program, and the declaration of the future. I want to remind you that the creation of people's republics was announced. People's Republics.
Moreover, it is beneficial for everyone to consider processes based only on processes of protest against the nationalist government. But, after all, everything is more complicated - it was a social revolution, which very quickly turned over and was packaged into the power that we now have in the DPR and LPR,” Ermolaev said.
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