Berlin “At the moment they are not attacking our earth, but our nerves. We are supposed to live in constant fear,” says Volodymyr Zelensky with a gloomy expression to his people about Russia and a possible war. “Don’t panic,” the Ukrainian president calls into the camera and urges his fellow human beings not to storm the shops, loot the shelves with hamster purchases and empty the savings accounts to exchange the local currency hryvnia for euros or dollars. Talking about it every day or reporting that “the fact that the war is coming will certainly not stop it,” summed up the head of state, who turned 44 on Tuesday.
Slogans of perseverance, calls for calm and the request not to be taken in by increasingly loud Russian propaganda dominate the political agenda in Kiev. Even if the West constantly warns of an imminent invasion, “it only fuels panic and destroys our economy”. However, according to Zelenski, his country needs “investments that signal trust in Ukraine”.
The Russian deployment of 109,000 soldiers and a good 10,000 service personnel at the Ukrainian borders has already left deep scars in the Ukrainian economy.
And US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday that his government does not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has already made a final decision to invade. But “he clearly has that ability now.”
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday that he would increase his troops in Eastern Europe and, like France, would move military equipment eastwards.
Central bank raises key interest rate and lowers growth forecast
Zelenskiy, meanwhile, calls such statements “panic” that Ukraine is “costing dearly.” In fact, the central bank in Kiev (NBU) raised the key interest rate to ten percent ten days ago – higher than in any other country in Europe. Inflation has jumped to the same level. The NBU lowered the forecast for economic growth by 0.4 percentage points to 3.4 percent.
And the central bank said: Ukraine is now temporarily cut off from the international capital markets because foreign investors have sold Ukrainian bonds on a massive scale. And new issues are hardly possible, since the returns on paper already on the market are now significantly higher – peaking at 27 percent last week – than the interest on the new debt. The EU has already announced financial aid of over 1.2 billion euros, and the USA is also considering corresponding aid.
Russia is stationing more and more soldiers and military technology on the border with Ukraine – from Transnistria in Moldova to annexed Crimea, east and north and deep in Belarus.
(Photo: dpa)
The economy of Ukraine had recently recovered significantly: in 2021 it had grown by three percent – and thus to the highest value of the gross domestic product on a dollar basis since independence a good 30 years ago: 184 billion dollars.
The profits of the Ukrainian banks, which were badly hit just a decade ago, had almost doubled to $2.6 billion in 2021. The internationally increasingly respected Ukrainian IT industry was able to increase its exports to a record 6.8 billion dollars, an increase of 36 percent.
The generation of renewable energies rose to eight percent and is expected to account for 27 percent of the country’s electricity requirements by 2030. The privatization of arable land begun under Zelenskiy picked up speed. Only climate-related partial crop failures in Ukraine, which is one of the most important wheat and corn exporters in the world, prevented even higher economic growth last year.
Development aid organizations are now sounding the alarm that there would be famine in parts of the world in the event of a war with Russia. Because the particularly productive, famous Ukrainian black earth soils are mainly in the south and east of the largest territorial state in Europe, where a particularly large number of Russian armed forces are concentrated not far away.
The Zelensky camp is now divided
Various signals are now being sent from those close to Zelenskiy: the military and security forces are very worried about an imminent Russian attack. Domestic and economic politicians are trying to calm the population.
Selenski himself now warns against “always talking about war” for fear of his economy collapsing. That’s not stopping him either.” Roman Sulschik, an economist in Kiev and a former banker at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, is also convinced that there is “no reason to panic just yet”. One only has to “endure the pain of the falling market” for a while.
>>Read here: World Risk Putin – How Russia Challenges the West
In the meantime, however, the Ukrainian secret service is said to have relocated its most important systems and documents from the capital Kiev to the west of the country, the Washington Post reported. More and more Ukrainians are taking military training courses at weekends in order to support the army with voluntary organizations.
Others are apparently already preparing to flee: And the Polish Secretary of State for the Interior Maciej Wasik declared at the weekend that his country expects one million refugees from the neighboring country in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The Czech Republic also expects a large wave of refugees in this case.
Ever new cyber attacks on Ukraine
Meanwhile, cyber attacks on Ukraine are increasing again: E-mails from the judiciary became known over the weekend, in which computer viruses were sent in addition to information from courts. Two weeks ago, a large number of internet servers and websites belonging to Ukrainian authorities were hacked and paralyzed, and masses of malware were installed. And the Russian threat is now increasingly undermining economic recovery and destabilizing Ukraine.
This is happening against the background of a Russian dual strategy, which the Ukrainian leadership is implementing: in addition to the military threat from outside, there is internal decomposition through cyber attacks and propaganda disguised as serious. According to investigations by British secret services, the goal is a “regime change” – the replacement of the EU and NATO-friendly government in Kiev with a regime loyal to Moscow. This is exactly what the Kremlin always accuses the West of doing: The West wants to overthrow the Russian leadership through opposition groups it controls and replace it with a pro-Western government.
More: Russia – militarily a giant, economically a dwarf