Ukraine’s Biggest Problem: No Money

Analysis by Walter Russell Mead & Staff

The biggest problem for the new Ukrainian government isn’t die-hard Yanukovych supporters or the threat of Russian involvement, but the fact that it is running out of money: 

In Kiev, the political focus turned to formation of a government capable of dealing with what acting president Oleksandr Turchynov called “catastrophic” economic challenges.

“Yanukovich’s regime brought the economy to catastrophe. State coffers are empty,” he said, calling for a national unity government to be formed by Tuesday.

Like the Yanukovych government before it, the new Ukranian government is likely looking for an aid package from outside the country. This is even more complicated than it looks. Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country, and the opposition’s reputation is no better than that of the former government. Neither the United States nor the EU will be eager to toss money down this rat hole. Why give aid that the oligarchs will immediately steal and send to Switzerland?

It’s going to be very hard to get Ukraine to sign up and enforce the conditions under which big new aid packages would make sense. Putin hoped that the offer of unconditional bailouts would buy a critical mass of oligarchs, but they fear getting eaten up by even bigger Russian oligarchs (backed by the Kremlin) as much as they fear having a bunch of Western accountants and lawyers landing in Kiev and slowly throttling all the fun out of stealing public money….To Read More…..

My Take - I have been following the bigger picture in all of this - which includes a great deal of minutia and subtleties the media is either ignorant of or aren’t covering, after all, Justin Bieber may have gotten a haircut, and they do have their priorities.   I'm not sure if I will post an in-depth article as this will be a lot of work and I have other posts I'm working on, but I will say this. I would put this in the same category as cutting your grass. Some things fall under the category of individual responsibility and this mess is their mess, let them fix it.

As for those who financially support them, let's hope it’s our adversaries. For many years I've thought we would have been better off if we had let the Russians and Chinese take over all those countries. It would have cost us much less in lives and money and would have assured a quicker overturn of communism. They would have gone broke long before Reagan forced their hands with Star Wars and a refusal to lend them any more money.

In my mind the end result will be a much stronger more vital Ukraine once real economics force them to end the corruption.  Once that happens they won’t need to beg for support.  They’ll truly have the freedom the general population so clearly desires.