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2023-08-31 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Russia outplayed the West where it always lost before
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Irina Alksnis
[RIA] While the Western media mainstream is sober in assessing the hostilities in Ukraine, the most perspicacious representatives of the expert community in the United States and Europe finally bothered to look even deeper and began to assess the economic lining of what is happening. And it is such that it will make any sane person shudder on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Over the past few days, the Kiev Ministry of Finance has pleased with two impressive facts at once. First, as of July 31, the country's public debt amounted to $132.92 billion. For comparison: at the time of the collapse, the total debt of the USSR was 96.6 billion dollars. Fact two: the state budget of Ukraine is currently financed by more than half from abroad.
Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that Kiev will spend more than $43 billion this year alone on providing the Armed Forces of Ukraine and conducting hostilities. That's just, according to him, "this is more taxes that we collect."
Of course, most of the funds are provided to Ukraine as loans, some - under rather mild conditions, and, for example, the IMF traditionally gives money under frankly enslaving requirements.
In Russia, this fact is usually interpreted in the spirit that the West will eventually squeeze every cent invested out of Kyiv, and even with draconian interest. However, the reality is much more complicated, because it is necessary to have something to squeeze out from where and what to squeeze out - and there are serious problems with this.
The Polish Institute of Economics summarized official Ukrainian statistics: 20 percent of the population left the country, unemployment exceeded 25 percent, 50 percent of the energy infrastructure was destroyed, 40 percent of enterprises reduced production, sown areas decreased by 30 percent, inflation is 27 percent, the budget deficit in 2022 was 17 .5 percent (much more this year). The state survives solely due to external injections, which, as noted above, was officially confirmed by the country's finance minister. In general, according to the Poles, the restoration of the Ukrainian economy - with the help of the West - will take at least a quarter of a century.
Of course, neither Europe nor the United States has the slightest interest or desire to do so. On the contrary, their entire strategy is based on the postulate of the inevitability of victory over Russia, which in the end will pay for everything - in general for everything. It is no coincidence that the topic "Moscow must pay for the restoration of Ukraine" is regularly heard at a very high level, including the UN.
The problem for the West is that reality does not want to come in line with its wishes. Victory over Russia - both on the battlefield and in the economy - is becoming more and more illusory, but the everyday reality is a devastated Ukraine, which requires constant impressive funding. Twenty, ten and even five years ago it was possible to brush aside, they say, Washington has the world's main printing press in its hands - and all these tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars are an insignificant trifle for it. Now the situation in both the American and European economies is such that these amounts, like the entire war against Russia, are beginning to go sideways - and the further, the more sensitive it will be.
The situation is aggravated by the following: Moscow managed to turn things around in such a way that Ukraine lost the lion's share of its ability to earn even from those that it still had. As the German publication FOCUS put it , Moscow took "the Ukrainian economy into a choke hold." You can remind about the stop of the grain deal. It brought living billions to both Kyiv and global corporations that barbarously exploit Ukrainian black soil. And now the loss of money from this source for the state budget, one way or another, will be forced to make up for the same West.
And there would be no problems with this: they would have given ten or twenty times more if the intended goal - victory over Russia - was achievable. The result obtained would compensate for any costs for it. But the plans did not work out - and the West began to realize this.
This means that it is necessary to change the strategy - and progress in this area is already noticeable. The further we go, the more clearly there is a shift from the attitude “We will defeat Moscow with the hands of Ukrainians” to the approach “Let's turn Ukraine into an unhealed wound for Russia”.
But here the question of expediency arises before the West. It’s one thing to pump tens of billions into Ukraine with an eye on a quick military victory, and it’s quite another to take Kiev on permanent and very expensive maintenance, which will be stolen a little less than completely and for which he will report in the format “we did a petty nasty thing to Moscow here - give me more money." And it is also impossible to leave Ukraine to the mercy of fate, because Russia will immediately "pick it up" and in general this will mean a severe geopolitical defeat for the West.
After the Euromaidan, Russian analysts quite often heard the idea that Kyiv, without ties and cooperation with Russia, would become a suitcase without a handle for the United States and Europe. Events have shown that this was an erroneous assessment. In 1991, Ukraine went on an independent voyage as a country so developed and rich that even many years of unrestrained plunder did not lead to fatal consequences for it. Between 2014 and 2022, the process accelerated and expanded many times over, but the country still supported itself, plus the West made excellent money there, pumping out everything it could.
And now the situation has finally reached that long-predicted stage of a suitcase without a handle: the Americans and Europeans are forced to finance Ukraine, and on a very large scale, because as soon as they stop the process, a collapse is inevitable there, but they cannot leave it either, because it is too there's a lot at stake on this card. The deepening economic crisis within the West itself and the growing global process of de-dollarization make this attraction especially exciting.
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Posted by badanov 2023-08-31 00:00||
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