MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. The West shows ever less readiness to finance Ukraine, while without these injections the country is doomed to see either a military coup or a social explosion, Viktor Medvedchuk, the former leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party, now banned in the country, has said.

According Medvedchuk, who leads the Other Ukraine movement, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's hopes for endless Western funding were naive and absolutely groundless.

"Having used Ukraine in their own interests, the US and the EU are now gradually abandoning it to its fate. <...> At the first hints of losses, the Western politicians’ political rhetoric rapidly begins to change. The US and EU budget votes of the last few days have demonstrated a change of course with regard to Ukraine. They are in no mood to overburden US and European taxpayers," Medvedchuk wrote in his column on the Smotrim.ru platform. The promise to convert the counteroffensive into macro-financial support has failed. The US and the EU have excluded Ukraine from funding for the near term, the politician said.

Medvedchuk believes that Ukraine is already on the verge of bankruptcy and without Western injections it is doomed to economic disaster. He recalled that the budget for 2024 envisaged $44 billion in foreign borrowings, while currently there was no confirmation of $29-billion revenues.

The leader of the Other Ukraine movement believes that this situation is fraught with a social explosion. He explained that without multi-billion donations the country will face a shortage of dollars and euros, which will provoke hyperinflation. As a result, the main population of Ukraine, especially public sector employees, will become several times poorer. The sharp impoverishment of the population will entail a crisis of non-payments, which, in turn, will put the Zelensky regime in front of a stark choice: to fund social needs or military spending.

Should it opt for military spending, the regime will spark revolt in the rear, while a decision to prioritize social needs will entail mutiny at the frontline and "a march of hungry soldiers on Kiev," Medvedchuk believes. "Angry protests will have to be suppressed, but there will be no money for that, either. This explains why Zelensky is so afraid of a third Maidan."

The Ukrainian leadership, he says, fell in the trap of false promises by the EU and the US.

"Ukraine has been used <...> and disposed of." The people did not feel any effects of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Western aid, "but it is the Ukrainian people that will bear the economic burden of Zelensky's criminal policies," Medvedchuk emphasized.