ROSE-TINTED GLASSES OF DEMOCRACY

After another terrible night following Russian missile attacks, morning calls came from parents and friends – “Hi, are you okay? Any hits?..”. It is at such moments that you realize with a particularly clear clarity that the key value for every person is their personal life, and the safety and health of their loved ones. Everything else, which yesterday seemed so important, global, and valuable, recedes to a completely different, extreme level of consciousness.

Like, for example, the so-called “democratic values.”

How often before the war did we hear this phrase from our European partners. How, holding our breath, we listened with reverence to the recommendations of various highly respected European officials:

–          about the equality of everyone and the guarantee by the European system of equal rights and freedoms for any individual law-abiding person,

–          about the impossibility of discrimination based on nationality in a true democratic society.

And when we watched with horror and incomprehension, “why is this happening?!” videos of Polish farmers blocking the border with Ukraine and spilling Ukrainian grain on the ground, most of us thought it was: some kind of accident, a misunderstanding, the influence of Russian special services on extremely radical political groups trying to destabilize the situation with aid to Ukraine. But:

–          when we see the new President of Poland blocking the continuation of aid to Ukrainian refugees (who emigrated at the beginning of the Russian aggression),

–          when we hear that the head of his office says that Poles should have THE GREATEST PRIVILEGES, and not any other nationality – we should… sincerely thank them.

Indeed, thank them for helping us finally take off the rose-tinted glasses of European democracy and get rid of the delusion of empty words, slogans, and promises that were once given to us all.

Recalling the historical quote of Lord Palmerston, one must always realize that any country in this world truly has neither eternal enemies nor eternal friends. Only the interests of that particular country are eternal. And they can change depending on the political conjuncture, internal social or external geopolitical shifts, and sometimes from ordinary foolishness or hyperbolized pseudo-ambitions of their own politicians, from the hypertrophy of their personal value and imagined political weight formed by their own exalted imagination.

That is why, when I participate in TV broadcasts, I always say that strategically we should not just wish to join the European community, about which the famous politician and Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, said that the Eurozone reminds him of a motley crowd forced to march to the same drum. We must farsightedly direct our efforts to form Europe around Ukraine, by providing a strategic security function for the EU! And certainly not be among its least economically developed countries, constantly extending a hand to Brussels for another subsidy.

We must build post-war Ukraine precisely as a key European state that will form a vector of Eastern European partnership around itself and, for example, together with Poland, Britain, and the Baltic countries, will assume strategic leadership in Europe and, free from problems and entrenched Western European bureaucracy, will implement its development strategy in new geopolitical realities.

Today, the Ukrainian army is the strongest in Europe, possesses real combat experience, and is capable of deterring the Russian aggressor. Therefore, Ukraine is the cornerstone of Europe’s security outpost. This is a constant!

The country’s economy is in an extremely difficult situation, and this is also a sad, but true fact.

Europe’s GDP last year was approximately $17 trillion – Ukraine’s was just over $190 billion:

–          on the one hand, the figures are incomparable;

–          on the other hand, with the right approach, we have the opportunity to form our own strategy for systemic penetration into the European market and stable presence of Ukrainian business there.

First of all, the state must finally fully assert itself and, as the main lobbyist, form and implement a long-term systemic economic protectionism policy for Ukrainian business at the international level – both within the country and beyond its borders. 

Economic protectionism, or a kind of strategy of a thousand streams, should be directly or indirectly implemented in Europe itself, when the Ukrainian Government will lobby not only the interests of the national economy as a whole or its individual sectors in foreign markets, but also individual industries or even companies. Through specialized representations at diplomatic institutions or partner industry associations, promote the interests of individual companies that will establish themselves by the hundreds and thousands in certain segments of the European market and form stable consumer audiences around themselves who will prefer Ukrainian goods and services provided by our companies abroad.

European businessmen, during the so-called “customs visa-free regime” introduced on June 4, 2022, which was formed as a temporary measure to support Ukraine’s economy, experienced firsthand what our national business is like with its innovative approach and what Ukrainian products are like, which, with comparable quality to European ones, can be significantly cheaper and more attractive to the end consumer. That is why they pressured their governments, and those, from June 5 of this year, stopped the “customs visa-free regime” in order to introduce protective mechanisms for their own businesses in the form of restrictive duties and quotas for us – creating artificial obstacles to the export of Ukrainian products to their markets. And we are talking about a situation where raw material exports – grain, seeds, oil, metals, chemicals, and others – predominantly went from Ukraine to Europe. At the same time, any first-year university student will tell you that the greatest added value and what is called profit can certainly not be obtained from the export of raw materials, but precisely from the supply of final consumption products, or at least semi-finished products, as well as, of course, services, to other countries. Let me remind you that services form within 80% of the GDP (2024 = 79.68%) of the USA – the most economically developed country in the world, whose share in the global GDP is about 26%.

It is no secret that Ukrainians who were forced to emigrate to EU countries quickly realized the difference between tourism and the realities of permanent residence there. They also faced a situation where getting the level of services they were used to in Ukraine, as well as the possibility of receiving them in Europe day-to-day, can be difficult, not to mention expensive. This can even apply to ordinary cosmetology services – for example, a well-done manicure for our most beautiful women in the world. Our refugees tell whole stories about the situation with the need for a long wait for a doctor’s appointment when it needs to be done quickly. They also say that comparing the level of services in Ukrainian restaurants with European ones is mostly not even necessary – ours is much higher. We have really better mobile communication and internet, and digitalization in general. The accessibility and efficiency of private medical services are also better developed here.

And what I have listed and much more – all these are opportunities for Ukrainians and Ukrainian entrepreneurs to build their own business networks in Europe, and the Ukrainian state should promote and help this.

On the other hand, it should develop tools – how to further implement the experience generated at the international level in Ukraine itself. How to build an attractive investment base, for example, in housing construction to provide for all those who were forced to leave their homes in temporarily occupied regions or lost them after missile attacks.

Well-developed tax incentives are needed for both our entrepreneurs – who are interested in developing their business in Europe, and for Western businessmen – who are interested in investing in business in Ukraine. As one of my colleagues said: “Ukraine should become a space for the development of those who are motivated to develop, but find it difficult to do so under the bureaucratic conditions that exist in Europe.”

At the same time as supporting our citizens currently in Europe, the state must also think about how to bring them back to Ukraine, especially young people. Because right now they are economically lifting Europe – and for some reason, no one is thanking them for it yet.

For example, in the aforementioned Poland, according to a study by the international company “Deloitte” commissioned by the UN Refugee Agency, Ukrainians have generated within 328.6 billion zlotys, or 76.9 billion euros, since the beginning of the war, which is 8 times more than all the aid Poland has provided to Ukraine combined.

Long before the war, Poland spoke about the need to attract 5 million labor migrants to meet the demand of their enterprises for labor. Therefore, working in Poland, as a country that provided shelter to our refugees, they are directly influencing the increase in the wage fund, taxes, increased consumption of goods and services, and overall the growth of Poland’s GDP = 2.7% of which in 2024 was formed precisely by Ukrainians (98.7 billion zlotys).

That is why the above-mentioned statements and actions of the leadership of our friendly Polish people do not so much cause surprise as they remind us of the eternity of double standards in international politics and that one’s own shirt is always closer to the body. That is why raising the issue at the level of our Government of at least a partial redistribution of taxes paid by Ukrainians in Poland, for example, in favor of the Ukrainian budget, must be implemented.

$12.8 billion – this is the amount by which Ukrainians replenished the Polish budget, for example, only in the form of taxes. Accordingly, at least part of these funds should logically go to the budget of Ukraine and replenish, for example, the Pension Fund. After all, it is impossible to exclude the situation that in the future another politician will say that upon reaching the age of 60-65, Ukrainians will be obliged to leave Poland and receive a pension in Ukraine. Or if they agree to pay a pension, it will only be for a corresponding amount of investment or real estate acquisition. Especially since the practice of using such instruments has been implemented in some other countries.

Accordingly, already today, at the level of the state, society, and individual business companies, we must form our own plan for soft penetration into the European economy, however fantastic it may seem today. Foreign companies operate on the territory of Ukraine, and ours operate in theirs – the rule of parity.

War removes glasses. That is why we should be more interested not in the double standards of Western European democracy and the paper values propagated to us, but in the solvent demand of European consumers. Just as international companies withdraw profits earned abroad from our state, so too should profits generated by Ukrainian enterprises in Europe return to Ukraine to be reinvested in business here in the Homeland.

The war will end. But we will truly win when every Ukrainian, no matter where they are on this planet or where they work, adheres to the principle of national unity:

one for all and all for Ukraine!