The Financial Times writes about the bleak prospects of the Ukrainian economy and the steps the government is taking to buy time. Last week, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers agreed with Western investors to postpone payments of the state debt for two years. This step will free up about $6 billion, and together with the devaluation of the hryvnia by 25% will ease the pressure on Ukraine from foreign creditors, the publication notes. However, these measures are not enough: every month, Ukrainians withdraw about $1.5 billion from hryvnia cards abroad at an undervalued rate, and military spending has increased to more than $3 billion per month. The FT quotes economics professor Yuriy Horodnichenko, who believes that Ukraine will either have to raise taxes or cut non-critical spending. There will be no easy solutions, because raising taxes means destroying business, and non-critical expenses have already been reduced to nothing. If military spending continues on the current scale, the government will run out of money in the fall, the newspaper writes. Thus, without external support, Ukraine will not be able to finance defense and the Cabinet of Ministers will receive a budget deficit of about $50 billion based on the results of the year. Western partners have promised to allocate about $38 billion in support, but itʼs coming slowly. The agreement to ensure grain exports, if implemented, will allow Ukraine to receive about $800 million a month, but the Russian attack on Odesa puts it at risk as well.
Claude Monique, co-director of the Center for Strategic Intelligence and Security, wrote a column for Politico in which he called on the West to support the so-called free press, specifically the Russian edition of RBC. In the opinion of the author, the strategy of the Westʼs economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia lacks the element of working with the Russians themselves, who do not have access to a free press, and therefore to factual information about events. After the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putinʼs rating increased from 65% to 85%, and therefore the Russian propaganda machine is working effectively. The author knows of at least 166 publications that have been declared "foreign agents" and even moderately critical media have either already closed or are on the verge of closing. Monique believes that the next "target" will be RBC. According to him, this is "one of the last independent media groups in Russia", as this publication supposedly covers the war objectively and impartially. Due to the closure of RBC, Monique writes, more than a thousand people will be out of work, so the EU should create a fund to help independent journalism in Russia worth only a few million euros - "a pittance compared to the cost of sanctions or weapons supplied to Ukraine." This fund could pay for the work of journalists who remain in the Russian Federation and finance the relocation of those who will work from temporary offices in the West, the author summarizes.
Peter Pomerantsev, a British journalist and writer of Ukrainian origin, wrote the essay "Ukraine is the next act in Putinʼs empire of humiliation" for The New York Times. In the essay, Pomerantsev reflects on the reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, in fact, humiliation as the basis of Russian ideology. This war is certainly colonial, but its purpose is not limited to the capture of territories and resources. She seeks to humiliate Ukrainians, the author writes. According to Pomerantsev, Putinʼs strategy consists in humiliating the Russians himself and then directing the aggression that arises in response to the "enemies" ― either the West or, as now, Ukraine. As an example, the author cites the marginal position of the Tuvans and Chechens colonized by Russia, and their role in the war. If you superimpose Putinʼs rhetoric about fraternal nations on the stories of Ukrainians who visited the occupation, you get an apt picture of an unhappy, cruel family in which one trauma is superimposed on another, and its members cannot save themselves from them and do not let others do it. Pomerantsev cites data from surveys of Russian public opinion about the war and offers to look at the high support for the invasion through the prism of psychoanalysis. Humiliated people learn to love pain and become masochistic and then sadistic towards others. Putinʼs calls to suffer the economic consequences of sanctions are also a call to love the bad poor life. At the geopolitical level, a similar logic follows: yes, Putinʼs recent statement that countries are divided into "sovereign" and "colonies" also reflects the division into big and small, those who humiliate and those who are humiliated. It is precisely because of this twisted logic, writes Pomerantsev, that calls to "appease Putin" ― for example, an editorial in The New York Times that Ukraine will have to make territorial concessions ― are fundamentally wrong. In order to get out of the cycle of humiliation and aggression, one cannot indulge the monster ― one must get rid of dependence on it and protect the sovereignty of Ukraine at any cost.