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- Ukrainians wanting to join the EU like many other Eastern European countries.
- Yanukovych being so corrupt the EU wasn't going to pay him off directly to join, unlike what Russia did by giving him $3 Billion.
This part of the narrative was well explained by Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, even though it has generally taken a harshly anti-Russian line. But, in a retrospective piece published a year after the crisis began, Der Spiegel acknowledged that EU and German leaders were guilty of miscalculations that contributed to the civil war in Ukraine, particularly by under-appreciating the enormous financial costs to Ukraine if it broke its historic ties to Russia.
In November 2013, Yanukovych learned from experts at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine that the total cost to the country’s economy from severing its business connections to Russia would be around $160 billion, 50 times the $3 billion figure that the EU had estimated, Der Spiegel reported.
The figure stunned Yanukovych, who pleaded for financial help that the EU couldn’t provide, the magazine said. Western loans would have to come from the International Monetary Fund, which was demanding painful “reforms” of Ukraine’s economy, structural changes that would make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder, including raising the price of natural gas by 40 percent and devaluing Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, by 25 percent.
With Putin offering a more generous aid package of $15 billion, Yanukovych backed out of the EU agreement but told the EU’s Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Nov. 28, 2013, that he was willing to continue negotiating. German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded with “a sentence dripping with disapproval and cool sarcasm aimed directly at the Ukrainian president. ‘I feel like I’m at a wedding where the groom has suddenly issued new, last minute stipulations,” according to Der Spiegel’s chronology of the crisis.
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Vesti Finance reports that Ukraine will receive an IMF credit worth $15.4 billion only after Ukraine reduces its national debt to 70% of GDP. I suppose this is IMF's way of saying "when Hell freezes over" because currently Ukraine's debt is closer to 100% of GDP due to both hand-over-fist borrowing and the collapse of the real economy.
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originally posted by: BornAgainAlien
a reply to: noeltrotsky
- Ukrainians wanting to join the EU like many other Eastern European countries.
No they didn`t.
Moscow Times isn`t a trustworthy source and an Ukrainian poll...?
Here`s an American poll...A weak 37% approve of the EU's leadership.
originally posted by: BornAgainAlien
a reply to: MimiSia
Ukraine gets the Greece treatment...and the Russian 90s treatment...get looted for your own good!
originally posted by: BornAgainAlien
a reply to: noeltrotsky
With over 60% of Ukrainian export going to the Eurasian Economic Union, it adds up perfectly what the cost was going to be by turning away from them.
And you have studied economics ?
originally posted by: Aaamok88
a reply to: BornAgainAlien
Star and flag OP
It is obvious to anyone following what's going on in this world that US empire is conquering the world and that Russia stands in their way
Will Russia stop them, or will Russia be just a speed bump ?
originally posted by: MimiSia
lucky for communism 1960's they assigned a flat to people in our community. after the collapse ..cashed it in and bought a golden ticket