MOSCOW, July 16. /TASS/. Ukraine’s economy has effectively ceased to function, and objective indicators show that it has shrunk by at least twofold, Ukraine’s prime minister from 2010 to 2014 Nikolay Azarov said in an interview with TASS.
"The Ukrainian economy simply cannot deliver the kind of results promoted by Kiev’s propaganda. It cannot. Quite simply because the population has been halved. More than halved, by a factor of 2.5. Electricity production volumes have also declined, and so on," he explained.
At the same time, Azarov acknowledged that life in the country continues. "Salaries are being paid, pensions are being disbursed, some statistics are even being recorded. People walk the streets, go into stores, make purchases. One might get the impression that everything is functioning well. But is that really the case? It is not. And what is behind this semblance of normalcy? It is being sustained by massive financial injections into the budget and the Kiev regime," the former prime minister said.
According to him, the national budget amounts to roughly $60 bln, but the bulk of this figure consists of subsidies. "If $50 bln flows into the treasury for various purposes, covering the budget deficit, purchasing equipment, paying wages - how can one detect that the economy is in disarray? In reality, the economy is barely functioning. It cannot function when, as I said, objective data indicates it has shrunk by at least twofold," he noted.
"They claim there is some sort of GDP growth, but I do not know relative to what. The headline figures appear large. But again, over three years they received $350 bln in aid and various loans. That’s roughly three times the country’s GDP. How are they calculating GDP now? How can anything meaningful be inferred from it? I don’t know. In any case, there is no sense in talking about the economy at this point. The country’s export potential, as I see it, has significantly declined. Imports exceed exports twofold. In any other country, this would be a very serious issue. But they do not consider it a problem, because the entire deficit is covered by foreign subsidies and assistance from various nations around the world," Azarov concluded.