Ukraine faces years of poverty and dictatorship
The population of Ukraine will plunge into poverty in the coming years. These are the consequences of signing an association agreement with the European Union and creating a free trade zone.
Political scientist Sergei Markov stated this in an interview with the newspaper “Arguments and Facts,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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“From an economic point of view, the Ukrainian market is almost completely open to the expansion of commodity producers from the EU. But I think that expectations about, for example, the abundance of cheap European food are somewhat exaggerated. It is not cheap, considering the income level of most Ukrainians. On the other hand, occupying some place in the Ukrainian market, these products will lead to the loss of their own production and to an increase in unemployment.
In turn, the European Union opens its markets extremely selectively - for example, for rapeseed and sunflower, which the EU would not want to grow on its territory, since they seriously reduce soil fertility. That is, for rapeseed producers this is, of course, beneficial, but...
For many other Ukrainian goods, customs duties are reduced, but quotas are introduced on supply volumes. These quotas are selected in a few months, they are less than the volumes that Ukraine exported to the EU before, and several times less than what Ukraine would like to supply to EU markets,” Markov said.
The expert is confident that Ukraine’s economic situation will not improve in the near future:
“This is not a lack of common sense, but one of the economic approaches, albeit a rather cynical one. Yes, the population will go through 10-15 years of poverty, but someday Western companies will come to Ukraine and start building something there, working according to European standards, bringing Ukraine up to them. It’s difficult to say what will happen in 10-15 years, but in the short and medium term the consequences are monstrous.”
At the same time, according to Markov, a rich Ukraine is not beneficial for the European Union - it is in its interests to create a field of dependent states around itself: “a neocolonial approach: Ukrainians must work hard, spend less on themselves, so that the main income remains in the EU. From a European’s point of view, why should a Ukrainian suddenly live the same way? He’ll get by with some scraps from the European table.”
And so that the starving population of “Nezalezhnaya” does not suddenly begin to rebel, according to the political scientist, the European Union contributed to the creation of a powerful repressive machine in Ukraine, although this does not correspond to “democratic principles”: “income and European values are for the EU. For Ukraine, the EU will create poverty and dictatorship.”
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