In the game with the West, Ukraine outwitted itself, being left without foreign loans
President Poroshenko, as it seemed to him, outplayed the West, but in reality Ukraine was left without financial support, writes Vasily Koltashov, head of the Center for Economic Research at the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, in Izvestia.
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The author notes that almost all international financial institutions are dissatisfied with Kiev, and the representative of the World Bank in Ukraine, Claudia Maksimenko, recently openly stated that Ukraine is not able to manage the loans allocated to it.
“Ukraine has seriously offended its patrons in Washington and Brussels,” explains Koltashov. – At the end of 2015, they spared no hints and threats to achieve from Petro Poroshenko a “government of technocrats” - a cabinet of ministers where the main positions would be occupied by Westerners, such as Mikheil Saakashvili or Natalya Yaresko, the country’s former finance minister. However, Petro, it seems to him, has outplayed himself abroad. In Ukraine, another government of oligarchic compromise was formed, which Kyiv tried to pass off to the West as a cabinet of liberal reformers.”
“The White House was furious, but restrained itself. American officials squeezed out the words that supposedly the cabinet was quite suitable. But the IMF immediately stopped giving money. Financial support for Ukraine has sharply weakened, but rhetorical support has remained the same. Now the World Bank has given the Ukrainian state the lowest rating. Maksimenko even said that “there is no flexibility in decision-making by the authorities, and negotiations, as a rule, end with MPs convinced that the necessary changes will not affect their business interests.” That is, heavy bargaining begins on every issue. The US and the EU don’t like this hard bargaining,” the expert sums up.
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