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But if you look at economic data there no great change after 2014. Ukraine is still poorer than even Belarus, country not known for being free from corruption or russian influence.
Ukraine's tfr is at western Europe levels. People have sex enough already, they just don't want the kids. And there was already mentioned current situation with many women in Europe. Men could join them there and maybe even have higher than average birth rates but many of them wouldn't want to return to war torn poorer than Belarus homeland.
No, this wasn't the point and this senseless war makes things in both Russia and Ukraine worse. "But these issues were similar in every other CIS and over time were fixed" presicily the opposite, in all those countries corruption reigns supreme and wasn't even remotely fixed, you can check this in any independent corruption index. It doesn't mean that it categorically impossible to solve this kind of issues but it seemingly takes way more time than 8 years. And this is the time that Ukraine doesn't have based on its demographics.
Post 2014 could be argued that it takes time to reorient economy. I would expect a more recent pop but they have been at some degree of war too during that time.
Is your data just picking up oil? I’m seeing 34% of Belarus exports are energy and while I thought Ukraine did some it seems like agriculture is more important. Also a good bit larger country so perhaps Belarus has performed better because of more energy per capita which depends less on trade networks.
Id still call fighting this war as Ukraines only choice. Long term they should look more like Poland.
What oil? There is less oil reserves in Ukraine than in Belarus. And this 34% figure is for export of refined petroleum products, that while can only be possible because of the export from Russia is still option that was not locked for Ukraine.
"Id still call fighting this war as Ukraines only choice" Of course it is but main point of my post was disagreement with this "Long term they should look more like Poland" sentiment.
Export of oil and fertilizers is a huge source of Belarus income. Cheap oil and gas from Russia are necessary for those industries to be viable, and are de facto subsidies from RF to Belarus. Lukashenka's regime , despite being much more brutal than Ukrainian even during Yanukovich times, ensured that most enterprises were state owned, and larger share of profits stayed in Belarus (unlike Ukraine, where whole industries got privatized, their owners through lobbying avoided large taxes, and profits were rerouted to tax havens somewhere in Cyprus and later used to buy mansions in Nice).
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I was trying to explain your income gap. Oil would be convenient and that is the first thing that popped up on Wikipedia as a difference.
Unless there is specific genetic weakness in the Ukranian people I see no reason to not expect them to reach the income levels of their neighbors when there is a clear desire to adopt the policies of the neighbors. That seems like a reasonable bet.
But there many more possible reasons. For example in difference with Belarus or Russia political structure where there aren't any one ruling oligarch clan and instead several competing. Better theories can be found in economists' works.
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