More than one quarter of its population—11 million people—live below the official poverty line, which is set at a meagre 1,176 UAH ($127) per month. The situation is far worse than official figures indicate, however. With an average monthly wage of only 1,218 UAH ($131), or 79 US cents per hour, millions more survive barely above subsistence level.
The official unemployment rate of 7.5 percent masks large numbers of unregistered and underemployed workers. It is, moreover, held down by high emigration, with tens of thousands fleeing the country in search of jobs. The equivalent of 15 percent of Ukraine’s population has left the country, giving it one of the largest diasporas in the world. Between 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved, and 2010, Ukraine’s population shrank from 51.7 million to 45.9 million.
Besides migration, the population decline is a consequence of Ukraine’s contracting birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world. Tragically, the country also has the highest maternal mortality rate in Europe, part of a health crisis that has seen incidences of HIV/AIDS grow to epidemic proportions, with 57 new cases a day identified in 2012.
Poverty has played a major role in the spread of HIV/AIDS—especially in parts of the formerly heavily industrialised regions of the east and south, where conditions are already depression-like.
In poverty’s wake has come an explosion of all manner of social diseases—from drug abuse and alcoholism to prostitution, with every sixth prostitute reckoned to be a minor. This is an underestimation, as Ukraine is a major hub of human trafficking, for the purposes of both sexual exploitation and forced labour.
[source : Julie Hyland, What the Western-backed regime is planning for Ukrainian workers, WSWS, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/15/pers-m15.html, 15th March 2014]
Ukraine is in a right financial mess.
Between 2008 and 2009, for example, Ukraine’s GDP fell by 15.1 percent while unemployment tripled to 9.4 percent. The former Stalinist bureaucrats and mafia-oligarchs who enriched themselves by stealing former state property have continued all the while to plunder state assets and pile up even greater personal fortunes.
Much worse is to come. Ukraine’s total debt is now estimated to be around $80 billion. With its currency having depreciated by 20 percent on the dollar since the start of the year, depleting currency reserves and increasing capital flight, Ukraine’s debt will rapidly grow even larger.
Yanukovich was about to sign an agreement with the EU and IMF to give Ukraine some help, but changed his mind and turned to Russia instead who were offering a less demanding agreement.
But then all hell broke loose in the Maidan.
Yanukovich had reached a deal and a truce with the Maidan protestors, but then unidentified snipers shot both protestors and police, which destabilised the whole situation, the violent fascists went berserk, caused general mayhem and eventually ousted the legitimately elected Yanukovich.
Now, the man suspected of running the snipers, Andriy Parubiy, is in charge of defence and national security. Parubiy will also be in charge of a new 60000 man paramilitary force National Guard. Parubiy founded Svoboda, the generally recognised extreme fascist Nazi-worshippers (but not recognised by Luke Harding who thinks they are cute and cuddly).
And with the new illegitimate Prime Minister now exposed as in bed with all the forces and think tanks that propagate Western fascism, Ukraine, and in particular the ordinary Ukrainian, faces a bleak fascist future. As the above quoted article states:
The Western powers now intend to seize the moment they did so much to engineer. Writing in the Financial Times in February, Anders Aslund, a former adviser to the Ukrainian government, welcomed the Western-backed coup as an opportunity to impose austerity. The crisis in Ukraine meant that a “radical reform programme should be easier to undertake… than in many countries that have faced similar crises in the past,” he wrote.
The new National Guard under the thug Parubiy will enforce the fascism that will sell Ukraine to the Western globalists.
And don't think the Western fascist globalists will be content with just grabbing Ukraine's national assets and resources. An eye-watering Greece-style bail-in could also occur...but not immediately.
The IMF may be preparing to force a "bail-in" of bondholders by Ukraine banks — one which could escalate to depositors — and strong country- and bank-bond sell-offs and depositors' runs are already reported underway at Ukraine local banks and branches of Russian banks in Ukraine.
According to International Business Finance: "Last Tuesday, an IMF mission started a 10-day visit to the country to thrash out the details of a possible plan. The following day Ukraine's acting finance minister, Oleksander Shlapak, said a debt restructuring was a possibility, sparking a sell-off in the country's bonds."
This has to do with Ukrainian government bonds; the IMF's new policy is to insist on bail-in "haircuts" of bondholders if it gives "assistance" in return for austerity. Britain and Germany may be demanding that, for political reasons, it not do so here AND NOW (i.e., that IMF allow a full bailout of government debt held by banks).
BUT "the country may be persuaded to attempt such a bail-in since the most recently issued Eurobond offering, a US$3bn instrument entirely bought by Russia last December, gives holders the right to accelerate should Ukraine's debt-to-GDP breach 60%, as would happen under a softer bailout." In other words, a full IMF bailout of Ukraine government debt would allow Russia to collect on that debt; a "bail-in" would not.
This bail-in prospect, since local and Russian banks hold Ukraine debt, is causing those banks' bonds to skyrocket in interest-rate yield, and threatening that insolvencies will break out. The banks will bail-in bondholders but perhaps depositors as well, and there are plenty of photographs of long lines — runs — outside these banks now.
[source : IMF-Conditioned Bank Bail-in in Ukraine May Be Imminent, http://larouchepac.com/node/30175, LPAC, http://larouchepac.com/node/30175, 14th March 2014]
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