TRIBUNE – It would be forbidden to analyze the Ukrainian political situation. Immediately, the madmen of political violence become angry and insult. They want to reduce the world to this childish dualism, with the forces of good on the side of Ukraine, and the forces of evil on the Russian side.
However, the current situation in Ukraine is the result of a succession of choices made by the bad masters of Ukraine since its independence. This situation deserves an analysis. It highlights the headlong rush of the current leaders. Ukraine is in fact experiencing the final convulsions of a bankrupt regime which is pushing the Ukrainian populations a little more each day into a chaos with genocidal overtones. It is a question of taking the measure of the misdeeds of a predatory and suicidal oligarchy for its country whose current leaders are the prisoners. This reality is attested to by public institutional documentation, a note from the management of the French Treasury of December 22, 2020 for example, public data from the World Bank and the IMF as well as the analyzes of financial institutions including rating organizations, which publish regularly, which are summarized here.
Au 30e anniversary of independence, this country had considerable economic and scientific potential and resources. It has become one of the poorest in the entire Eurasian region. The conclusion is clear. On the industrial level already, activities sank from the 1990s to the 2020s. Several examples illustrate this perfectly. Production of buses in Lviv or automobiles in Zaporozhye have been abandoned. The industrial giant Antonov has not produced a single plane since 2015. The Black Sea shipyards have almost disappeared. We are long before the war.
I mentioned the mistreatment of Ukrainian populations in my previous article. The World Bank itself reports a young generation with a low level of education with a very deficient health system. Demographically, the birth rate has plummeted since independence while the death rate continues to soar: hygiene, lack of care, malnutrition, etc. The younger generations aspire to work in neighboring states, including Poland, where the number of immigrant workers has increased significantly since 2014, after the revolution. International institutions report that the unemployment rate, officially 10%, is in fact much higher than state statistics. Worse still, the famous human capital index has not evolved favorably since 2010. Ukraine is below its main neighbors in Central Asia.
The general mismanagement of the country can be seen in an incessant rise in consumer prices, more than 10% in 2021, therefore before the war, on basic necessities. Some products have even doubled. The gas rose by a third. International institutions were already saying that the purchasing power of the Ukrainian was one of the lowest in Europe in 2019, even before the war. These institutions estimate that purchasing power has fallen by 30% since independence, putting Ukrainians far behind Russians, Belarusians or Kazakhs.
On a more financial level, the very recent decisions of the rating organizations (Fitch and Standard & Poors) to place Ukraine at near risk of default confirms this catastrophic situation, prior to the war, as much as the inability of Ukraine to bear and prolong the price of war, instead of negotiating. The economy plunged in 2014 and 2015, showing once again that revolutions are expensive. The currency also collapsed, almost quartering against the dollar from 2013 to 2021, testifying to the extreme fragility of the country’s entire economy. Political uncertainties, including the climate hostile to compliance with the Minsk agreements, led entrepreneurs and investors to anticipate the risk of war, further weakening the country’s economy. Now, let’s remember, it was as much up to the Ukrainian government to respect these agreements as it was up to the Russian side, which was not done.
The balance sheet over three decades demonstrates the harmfulness of a predatory oligarchy that monopolizes public funds, sells off activities, destroys industrial tools. The degradation is very deep. The most recent analyses, but still before the war, reported a “deadly peak”, a breaking point of a dying economy. So, from this point of view, the war would be a real headlong rush, the make-up strategy of an oligarchy which has ruined the country in three decades for its personal interests. Here is a political and economic reality of which I repeat to the inattentive reader one last time, that it is about the balance sheet of independence in 2020, therefore before the war. The threat of default therefore predates the war there too.
Investments are low, attesting to an economy predated by the oligarchs without economic projects for the country, and a low attractiveness for internationals, due to ratings in terms of corruption and mafia practices that are not very encouraging.
International economic observers have therefore already been warning for years about this catastrophic situation. The call for business reform: rights, contracts, administrative security is not new, but the oligarchs had no interest in it. The development of agriculture and a national agrarian reform have not been carried out, with the risk of land cession to foreign powers remaining to be substantiated. Finally, the Ukrainian is even poorer than the Moldavian or the Azerbaijani.
So why go to war rather than respecting the Minsk agreements and protecting populations from the disasters of an avoidable war? This is the real question and the real responsibility of the Ukrainian elites. Ukrainian Finance Minister Serguii Marchenko feared the unbearable cost of war beyond a few months. The IMF and the World Bank estimate that GDP will fall by 50% by the end of 2022, ruining the country. It is estimated that each month of war costs at least 10 billion dollars. It was therefore reckless and irresponsible to go into conflict and create the conditions for aggression. No geopolitician can deny today that the violation of the Minsk agreements is a proven fact resulting from the decisions of Ukrainian leaders.
In addition to the inability to economically bear the cost of the war, the war itself leads to the devastation of infrastructures and the probable loss of almost 80,000 to 100,000 young men already, at the rate of a few hundred a day, for almost 200 days of war, without forgetting the disabled for life. Is it a coincidence that Ukraine is currently launching a mass recruitment of men of fighting age? There, I dare to mention like Raphaël Lemkin (international jurist founder of the concept and definitions of genocide) decisions of a genocidal nature, against his own people. Organized flight of populations, forced displacement, ongoing persecution of minorities, sending to death all Ukrainian youth, major winter risk following an irresponsible entry into the war. The analysis is simple, the war will weigh on future generations, amputated, shattered and ruined by the price of war. However, a State can always avoid war, negotiate, stop the massacre and consider peace, it is also the honor of a leader. The most recent statements by Ukrainian leaders are pushing an already devastated youth to sacrifice.
Let’s conclude. From 1991 to 2020, before the war, this country was ruined by leaders who now prefer war to negotiation. The responsibility for the situation lies as much with these Ukrainian leaders who refused the application of the Minsk agreements as with the imperial will of Putin who seized the opportunity, like a feudal on the lookout. It is simply childish and irresponsible to maintain the fantasy of the good guy and the bad guy. He is guilty of refusing the sense of discernment and the historical analysis of this country. It is even a bit criminal vis-à-vis the Ukrainian populations to prolong indefinitely an absurd sacrifice which disguises the crimes of an elite against its people, a people today so much martyred by the decisions of their leader and their stubbornness than by the action of the Russians.
Yes, Ukrainians are the victims of their predatory elites who for three decades have been systematically destroying the country for personal enrichment. Fanaticism is as much among these leaders as among their Russian adversary. This is why it is urgent to make an appeal to reason, an appeal to peace, an appeal to the very raison d’être of the European institutions which were built on “never again”. However, these institutions betray their raison d’être to go to war, to push hatred beyond all reason. We need to rise up and demand that Europe and our national leaders promote peace through diplomacy and rapid negotiations, before we see terrible ruin for which we will bear some responsibility. The winter will be terrible. It will then be necessary to mobilize hundreds of billions in an effort to rebuild what should never have been destroyed. Absurdity of Western nations tearing themselves apart again. Meanwhile, other powers in the world continue their cooperation and development. Some have become mad, stupid and wicked again.
Essayist, researcher and founder of the Institut de Recherches de Philosophie Contemporaine, Pierre-Antoine Pontoizeau has notably published works on the theory of communication, the theory of organizations, the theory of political language and the philosophy of mathematics.