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Ukraine is different. It is a European country that is being fast-tracked into the EU. Those who try to attack my friends, will get harshly punished.
The rules are clear. Just because someone somewhere broke them and didn't get punished is not an excuse.
In other words they are getting fast tracked into diversity, ESG ratings and rule by wall street. Ukraine has remained Ukraine after centuries of Russian rule. Berlin is turning into a third world city 30 years after "freedom". The EU elites hate everything that is actually European. They want to turn it into a souless consumerist platform for Amazon and Netflix.
The wall street does not rule the world or countries. They certainly do lobbying but it is not a dictatorship and many smart people constantly suggest ways how to improve the global financial system.
Noah Smith have made very good comparisons about the economy of the post-soviet countries – the countries which have joined the EU have developed faster than those which didn't. If you look from the point of view of freedoms, you will see the same results.
Ukraine has lost a lot of potential by failing to join the EU sooner. Better late than never.
You have the causation exactly backwards (just like Noah Smith). The countries that joined the EU were the countries that had already transitioned better.
That's not really true. At some point Russia's GDP was even higher than Latvia's. Belarus is also relatively stable and more prosperous than Ukraine.
The EU membership boosted the growth of their members quite considerably.
Of course, you could say that readiness to join the EU was also a big impetus for necessary reforms. Turkey was going that way too. But since they clearly decided not to join the EU, their growth stalled.
It isn’t about size of gdp or gdp per capita. It was a question of how they privatized. Ukraine and Russia privatization scheme was corrupt beyond belief. Other areas (eg Poland) implemented schemes that would lead to long term growth.
There was not much of a pie to divide at the start. All countries started being very poor but some countries received new investments and others not.
Specifically in Ukraine oligarhs resisted establishing links with the EU exactly because they feared that new investments will make their wealth to become proportionally much smaller (hence, losing power). If Ukraine had joined the EU despite inefficient privatization, it would have been much more developed today.
On the other hand, the countries that remained economically related to Russia, the risk of western investments was too high and they remained poor.
That just isn’t true. The idea it was zero and FDI is what made the difference belies the fact that some of the countries were just relatively poor and some of the richer countries did worse. Maybe it is a miracle but the transitional economies that performed better were those who transitioned better. Maybe “wasn’t a shit show” is predictive of growth better than “got fdi”
Sorry, I have hard time to understand you. English is not my native language and words like “belies” and “wasn't a shit show” are hard to grasp.
I would say that all countries in the Former Soviet Union and some even beyond that were doing equally poorly.
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