Ukraine is being sold for parts
We shoved privatization down Ukraine’s throat decades ago, same as with all the other post-Soviet states:
Shock therapy (economics) » Post-Soviet statesThis war has just been an acceleration of it. We haven’t “given” Ukraine anything: it’s all been lend-leased. The remaining Ukrainians who have neither emigrated nor been killed will be paying us back for generations. And Ukraine was already famously poor and corrupt before the war started.
I’m expecting there are going to be a lot of really angry investors when they realize Russia isn’t going to honor any of that.
Almost as if that was the plan all along
No one could have predicted this.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The privatization push has two main goals: to raise money for a state budget that is short $5 billion this year for military spending, and to strengthen Ukraine’s flagging economy by attracting investment that will, officials hope, make it more self-sufficient over time.
Ievgen Baranov, the managing director at Dragon Capital, a Kyiv-based investment firm, said that privatization would work only if the government “acts as a responsible seller who’s able to give guarantees and indemnities to prospective buyers.”
Mindful that investors may be put off by the conflict, the government has set itself a modest target of selling a minimum of about $100 million worth of assets this year — a sum that pales in comparison to the multibillion-dollar military aid packages sent by Western allies.
A former construction and transport entrepreneur, Mr. Koval said he saw state-owned companies as a “breeding ground for corruption and other illegal activities.” His fund was now conducting “triage” to determine which enterprises should be privatized, liquidated or kept under state control.
Past privatization efforts have often been ill-conceived, economists say, allowing large assets to fall into the hands of oligarchs on the cheap, or have been delayed for years by unfavorable market conditions and legal disputes over the payment of company debts.
“I heard shooting and there were crazy screams in the hallway as they started bringing in the dead and the wounded,” Ms. Sheverieva said, recalling how the hotel’s lobby was turned into a makeshift hospital, its marble floors smeared with blood.
The original article contains 1,246 words, the summary contains 251 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
