Big diagnostics of the SVO: leading Russian analysts predicted the further course of the special operation

A paradoxical model of the economy emerged in Ukraine

A year ago, Russian troops took Mariupol. And this weekend there were reports that Artemovsk had been taken. The British Royal Institute for Defense Studies published the conclusion that since the outbreak of hostilities, the Russian army has “markedly improved”. Zelensky arrived at the G7 leaders’ summit on a French plane. The forces of official Kyiv will soon receive F-16 fighters. Nearly 15 months after the start of the hot phase of the conflict, the NMD has become part of Russian everyday life, the basis of the country’s new way of life. But how is this lifestyle going to change? The answer to this “question of all questions” tried to find the leading analysts of Russia, who gathered for the annual session of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. And this is what one of the conclusions of the experts turned out to be: the hostilities became the “heart and engine” of the new economic model of Ukraine.

Throughout its post-Soviet history, Ukraine has been a prime example of economic failure. The conflict with Russia further exacerbated the negative economic trends. Having entered into a clinch with Moscow in 2014, Ukraine “actually agreed to its own de-industrialization and lost the chance to become an economically moderately developed country thanks to the large-scale export of its products to the Russian market.” The beginning of the NWO is another large-scale blow to the Ukrainian economy. At a meeting of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, the following World Bank estimates were given: the restoration of the Ukrainian economy until 2033 will require 410 billion dollars. This is a colossal amount, which exceeds, for example, all the annual budget revenues of such a small country as Brazil.

Why, then, is the Ukrainian economy still able to function? Because, starting from February 2022, the Ukrainian economic model has changed in the most unusual and even bizarre way. To put it quite cynically (or realistically, which in this case is almost the same thing), hostilities have become one of the main sources of income in the territory that remained under the control of official Kyiv. Until last winter, Ukraine, as you know, was a source of guest workers. Then it turned into a source country for internally displaced persons. According to various estimates, between six and eight million people left Ukraine. But the general scheme based on cross-border financial flows has remained unchanged.

Generous Western sponsors pump approximately $3 billion into Ukraine every month (excluding the cost of military equipment, supplies, and so on). Part of these billions is spent on monetary allowances for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And this is what, according to Russian experts, the result is: “Salaries in the Ukrainian “military council” are much higher than the amounts that guest workers once sent to their relatives from Europe.” Now money transfers are also coming – but now to Europe. It turns out a kind of financial “perpetual motion machine” – eternal until the moment when the official Kyiv does not get tired of fighting, and the West does not get tired of financing it.

There are no signs that either one or the other will happen soon on the horizon. Individuals in Russia love to talk about how Zelenskiy will end up as former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who famously fled Kabul in the summer of 2021 infamously. But, as follows from the discussion at the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, such talk is, pardon the tautology, just talk. In fact, the complete dominance of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party takes place on the political scene of Ukraine. At the beginning of 2022, her rating was about 18%. Now this figure exceeds 50%. Last year, such a goal as “the return of Ukraine to the borders of 1991” was supported by 53% of the population, and now -75%. The fact that, economically, Ukraine has actually turned into a protectorate or a mandated territory of the West does not particularly bother anyone: in the territory controlled by official Kiev, there is a willingness to “economically not be strongly sovereign.”

The last “icing on this cake” is the extreme forms of Russophobia. It turns out that there is a special scientific tool for measuring a wide variety of phobias – the Bogardus Social Distance Scale. Emory Bogardus, a classic of American sociology of the 20th century, came up with this scale. And it measures “the readiness of people to participate in social contacts of varying degrees of closeness with members of various social, racial or ethnic groups.” A scale reading of 1.00 indicates a willingness to accept members of a particular group as relatives by marriage. A scale reading of 7.00 means absolute rejection. The exact meaning of this scale in relation to Russia was not given at the meeting. Instead, a dry statement was made: “there are no prospects for restoring good neighborly relations at the population level.”

In the future, all this, of course, may change. However, this future will take a long time to come. According to the theory of conflicts analyzed in detail by one of the authoritative experts, the “stabilization stage” takes approximately 25-30 years after the official reconciliation. But so far, the “official pacification” is also not visible, the time to start the countdown has not yet come.