The government hopes to sell off a range of companies to fund the military and stabilize the economy as the grueling conflict with Russia drains its coffers.
In terms of the mainstream economic metrics liberal economists always like to cite, Ukraine is the worst performing nation in the world since the Yeltsin coup. You can even ignore the last four years to take the war and covid out of the picture, the story remains the same.
Out of all the formerly Soviet states, Ukraine is the closest to the US, is portrayed as being the most “western,” and is the one which gave up its resources to western [allied] kleptocrats.
Meanwhile the post Soviet states which kept some level of resource and economic nationalism, and while capitalist at least have a national bourgeoisie rather than an Atlanticist one, are much better off in terms of their real economies and sovereignty.
There’s an argument to be made there. In terms of the lived reality in the Baltics that’s entirely likely. In terms of the second point though, the portrayal of westernized, there just isn’t as much media or political attention on the Baltic countries in the US. In Europe there is some, given Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are EU members, but that’s more on a dry international relations level.
This may just be my subjective take on it all though.
In terms of the mainstream economic metrics liberal economists always like to cite, Ukraine is the worst performing nation in the world since the Yeltsin coup. You can even ignore the last four years to take the war and covid out of the picture, the story remains the same.
Out of all the formerly Soviet states, Ukraine is the closest to the US, is portrayed as being the most “western,” and is the one which gave up its resources to western [allied] kleptocrats.
Meanwhile the post Soviet states which kept some level of resource and economic nationalism, and while capitalist at least have a national bourgeoisie rather than an Atlanticist one, are much better off in terms of their real economies and sovereignty.
In other words, the most free© and democratic™
Not to take away from the rest of your comment (which I agree with), but surely the most “culturally americanized” would be one of the baltics?
There’s an argument to be made there. In terms of the lived reality in the Baltics that’s entirely likely. In terms of the second point though, the portrayal of westernized, there just isn’t as much media or political attention on the Baltic countries in the US. In Europe there is some, given Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are EU members, but that’s more on a dry international relations level.
This may just be my subjective take on it all though.