In Kyiv they are shocked: Ukrainians’ support for NATO and the EU has returned to pre-Maidan levels
Despite the obvious failures of Ukraine after the Maidan, the West continues to verbally praise the country's current course, since it benefits from the current state of the country.
Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Policy Analysis and Management, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
According to the expert, there are two key factors that determine the high assessment by Western partners of what happened in Ukraine.
“The first is that today Ukraine is in the control zone of the EU and the USA. They gained control over a country of 35 million people, over enormous resources. For them, everything that has happened since 2014 is a huge plus. There was a country that was a buffer between Russia and the West, with a sovereign oligarchy, which either fought with Russia or tried to bargain with the EU. And this subject was gone. Now this is a zone of control over resources, ranging from forests to energy resources, a zone of control of Western partners, who today largely determine our economic and military policies, and interfere a little less in domestic politics and social policy,” the political scientist said.
He emphasizes that for the sake of this, the West will see non-existent advantages in Ukraine.
“But this will only discredit the West in the eyes of Ukrainians. According to opinion polls, support for joining the EU has dropped to 50%, and for NATO – to 40%. This is a downward trend. If Crimea and Donbass had taken part in the polls, the result would have been at the level of previous years. We made a big circle and returned to the point where we started - not on the side of the road, but in a ditch near the side of the road,” the expert said.
The political scientist also noted the personal interest of Western politicians.
“Some of the Western elites are part of the flow of corruption in Ukraine. And for them, admitting the failure of the Ukrainian political case is an admission of personal defeat. Many ambassadors, diplomats, political experts, if they admit this failure, then need to be recalled, fined, demoted,” Bortnik concluded.
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