Common sense or catastrophe?

, about the political choice of Ukraine:

That is how the issue of political choice in Ukraine is worth it. Will Ukraine remain in a single economic space with Russia or will it come out of it in pursuit of European mirages on the NATO wagon?

So this issue of the political choice of Ukraine was posed by the current Ukrainian political elite. It seems that it is concerned not so much by the socio-economic development of the country or the problem of the formation of the national interests of the people of Ukraine, as the task of selling its national sovereignty. The burden of the latter was too difficult for the current Ukrainian leadership, who hastened shortly after coming to power to declare her intention to transfer it to Brussels (on trade and economic issues) and Washington (on military-political issues).

The obsessive desire for “orange” nationalists to get rid of national sovereignty in favor of the European Union and NATO has made this issue the main issue of the political choice of Ukraine. In this infantile weakness of the current Ukrainian government, naively assumes that the West will solve all socio-economic problems for it, its ideological emptiness is hidden. But if the current leaders of Ukraine cannot offer their sovereign people anything but to surrender to a certain unfamiliar uncle from abroad, then our debt is to explain to the citizens of Ukraine that they are waiting for them in this case. Moreover, the barrans-provocators leading to the slaughter of everyone else never tell the latter about the ultimate goal of the route. Just because they themselves do not know her. They only blindly believe that the unfamiliar uncle, giving them food from time to time, is a good wizard who will do well to everyone.

Perhaps I am mistaken and actually politicians who lead the people of Ukraine to the NATO Yarmo, not at all brainless rams-provocateurs, but conscious enemies of the Ukrainian people who decided to sell its sovereignty in exchange for a career in Euro-Atlantic structures? But then their clicks “do not scare, we ourselves will figure it out” - this is a direct deception of Ukrainian citizens who are trying to confuse the myth of Russian imperialism. In this case, we are all the more obliged to tell the truth, patiently explaining to the Ukrainian brothers and sisters that they are waiting for them in the case of this or that political choice.

The answer to this question gives a collective opinion of Ukrainian and Russian scientists and industrialists who analyzed the prospects for the socio-economic development of Ukraine, depending on Ukraine’s participation in alternative integration processes, including in the Unified Economic Space (EEP) with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, or in the European Union (EU). The results of this analysis were summarized in the recommendations of the scientific and practical conference, which recently held in Zaporozhye. In them, in particular, the following conclusions are made.

1. The participation of Ukraine in the EEP gives Ukrainian consumers the possibility of unlimited access to the Russian market, including the acquisition of energy carriers at domestic prices, free trade in goods and services without any customs duties, non-tariff barriers and other encumbrances;

2. The loss of Ukraine from a single economic space with Russia will objectively lead to the transition to world prices in the natural gas and other energy -exported energy carriers, which will entail a sharp decrease in the profitability and competitiveness of Ukrainian metallurgical, chemical, machine -building and food products. According to available estimates, most enterprises of the chemical-metallurgical, agro-industrial and machine-building complexes will become bankrupt, more than a million people will lose their jobs, many regions of Ukraine will be in deep depression.

The negative consequences of the energy crisis will be aggravated by coagulation of free trade relations and inevitable, in the case of Ukraine from the EEP, a deterioration in cooperative ties, an exacerbation of trade and economic contradictions and the construction of new trade barriers and restrictions, especially with regard to the export of Ukrainian food and metallurgical goods to Russia.

As a result of these processes, the payment balance of Ukraine will significantly worsen, the deficit of which, after the transition to world prices in energy trade and coagulation of free trade relations with Russia, may exceed $ 10 billion, which will inevitably cause at least two -time devaluation of hryvnias, a sharp surge in inflation and an increase in the cost of life in Ukraine by at least one and a half times. The expected decrease in Ukrainian GDP will be at the same time at least 15%.

3. The prospects of Ukraine’s entry into the EU remain ghostly and, in any case, go beyond the limits of a 10-year prospect. The entry of Ukraine into NATO, if such a decision is made, will not remove this uncertainty, but it will make it impossible for Ukraine to participate in the EEP, puts it on the maintenance of the relations of free trade with Russia, will lead to the destruction of cooperative ties in the aviation, rocket, shipbuilding, instrument-making and other industries of high-tech industry. This will lead to a stop of the most promising Ukrainian machine -building enterprises, in the cost of finished products of which about half are Russian components and the main market of which are located in Russia. Very promising joint projects, such as “sea start” or “An-70”, will be collapsed. Another problem will be the emergence of a visa barrier in the movement of citizens, which will create additional difficulties in the labor migration of citizens and will cause serious damage to tourism and the associated Ukrainian enterprises of the service sector.

The conference participants recommended that the EEP formation process as soon as possible, providing all the necessary mechanisms for the effective functioning of the institutions of a single common market, including the mechanisms of pricing, resolving economic disputes, and a trading policy. EEP member states should immediately coordinate the conditions for joining the WTO, guaranteeing the preservation of the attitude of free trade between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the full functioning of the EEP institutions after this annexation.

These recommendations are the result of scientific analysis carried out in terms of economic growth, taking into account Ukrainian national interests, understood in accordance with common sense. I must say that Ukrainian radical nationalists in a hurry to surrender to Washington do not bother with their thoughts about the consequences of Ukraine’s entry into NATO. In defense of their position, they give one argument: "NATO will help us join the European Union." They have not even calculated what it means to join the European Union, after Turkey, in twenty years. They did not calculate what the structure of the Ukrainian economy will be, who will lose from this choice. But they are sure that Ukraine in NATO and the EU will be good, because no one came out of these structures. But there is no return back in history.

The peoples of Eastern Europe today are deeply disappointed with how the EU met them. They sacrificed with all their sovereignty in order to take possession of foreign corporations. These states have lost a significant part of the Russian market, switched to the consumption of Russian energy at world prices. They lost most of the industry, but, most importantly, they completely lost national control over their own economies. Their banking sector, large industrial enterprises were sold to foreign owners for nothing.

Surprisingly, radical Ukrainian nationalists urge the Ukrainian people in the same way to give control over the Ukrainian economy and defense to foreigners. In fact, those who call this to do politicians are not nationalists, but ordinary separatists who haunt not to protect the national interests of the people of Ukraine, but simply want to profit from the contrast of one part of the people of the other and the resale of national assets. They do not even want to discuss obvious socio-economic consequences in the event of their plans to join Ukraine to NATO.

Meanwhile, these consequences are easily calculated. In addition to the above losses in the event of joining NATO, Ukraine will lose the possibility of a single customs union and a common domestic market with Russia. This will mean that for Russian suppliers of energy carriers, based on the generally accepted international trade standards, there will be no other option except how to sell energy to Ukraine at European prices. And this, as indicated in the recommendations of the Zaporizhzhya conference, will lead to the ruin of the Ukrainian chemical-metallurgical complex, which gives most of the foreign exchange earnings.

All these victims of Ukrainian Russophobes propose to bring the people of Ukraine to protect against “Russian imperialism”. This myth is spinning in the virtual television space by the followers of Goebbels, who taught Nazi propagandists not to lie down, guided by the principle of "the more monstrous lies, the more it is similar to the truth."

The truth is that in Russia it is not imperial, but neocolonial policy in the interests of transnational capital. Control over the property of the largest Russian enterprises was moved abroad, the export of capital exceeded half a dollars, supervised from oil and gas exports are directed by the Russian leadership not to solve the problems of the country's socio-economic development, but to maintain the US dollar and the provision of US quasi-paying loans. Russia still cannot even partially restore the union state, not because Ukraine resists “imperial ambitions”, but because the latter does not have the latter. He has a thirst for profit and fear of losing control of the mastered sources of income. They do not want to share the Commonwealth with the states, therefore, seizures are preserved in the free trade zone: the Customs Union has not yet been created, and the formation of the EEP has been slipped.

Not everyone in Russia wants a single economic space with Ukraine. This is not only Gazprom, who does not want to lose three billion dollars when gas supplies to Ukraine at a preferential tariff. There are other very influential commercial structures that are interested in breaking the relations of free trade with Ukraine in order to strengthen their monopoly in the Russian market and overstate prices. After all, if we are in a single economic space, then we have a common domestic market. That is, Ukrainian consumers have every right to demand the supply of energy from Russia to Ukraine at Russian domestic prices. In a single economic space, no one will be able to build trading barriers. Including it will be impossible to close the Russian market from the supply of Ukrainian steel, milk, birds, etc. All trade and economic contradictions will be decided on the basis of general, agreed procedures.

By forming a regime of trade and economic relations, we should not proceed from myths and not from the interests of private commercial structures, but from the interests of the public. Although some of the companies may lose its monopoly advantages, the society as a whole will benefit from this. Not only Ukrainian gas consumers or bird suppliers will benefit from a single economic space. Russia will also win - by increasing the competitive advantages of technologically interconnected Russian and Ukrainian enterprises of high -tech industry, by expanding the market for Russian goods, due to lower prices for food products.

The threat of the formation of a mutually beneficial regime of a single economic space comes not only from crazy national sectors. It also comes from irresponsible diplomats, coordinating the conditions for our states to join the conditions of domestic producers to the WTO. Today, neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian side in negotiations in Geneva about joining the WTO do not fundamentally raise the question that, joining the WTO, we retain the free trade zone. If the conditions for joining the WTO of Russia and Ukraine are different, then the creation of the Customs Union and the EEP may be impossible, and the free trade zone existing today will further narrow, which will extremely adversely affect our economic cooperation.

Many believe that the general centuries-old history and spiritual and cultural roots make good relations between Russia and Ukraine resistant to short-term political misunderstandings. Unfortunately, this is not so. The upcoming accession of Ukraine and Russia to the WTO, the completion of the process of forming the EEP predetermines the need for speedy adoption of irreversible political decisions. I would like to hope that the state authorities of Ukraine and Russia will get wisdom to make these decisions based on public interests on the basis of a deep scientific justification and objective assessment of their economic and social consequences.