Starry Aspirant

(for the EIU) In mid-January Petro Poroshenko returned to Ukraine to face possible arrest on a charge of treason. In the event, however, a Kyiv court postponed its decision on whether to place him in pre-trial detention. The former president is accused of funding a terrorist organisation, owing to his role in helping to organise the purchase of coal from separatist-held areas of the Donbas at the height of the armed conflict there in 2014-15. This is just one of a series of actions taken against Poroshenko, and other established figures within the Ukrainian elite, by the authorities under the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, most recently under the rubric of “de-oligarchisation”.  Though soundly beaten by Zelenskyi in the presidential campaign of 2019, Poroshenko ran on a more “nationalist” platform, with a slogan of “Army, language, faith”. This aimed to draw on his success in containing the spread of Russia’s “Novorossiya” military project to parts of Donetsk and Luhansk r...

(for the EIU) The cost of borrowing from abroad rose for the Ukrainian government in December 2021, according to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU, the central bank). Ukrainian sovereign Eurobonds are reported as trading at yields of around 9.5% across maturities.  This reflects recent developments in global economic policy and geo-politics. The key policy announcement is that of the US Federal reserve, which has said i t says it intends to wind up its long-running monetary stimulus programme more quickly than planned, and could bring forward monetary tightening,  in response to rising inflationary pressures. This has lifted borrowing rates even for countries considered to be relatively risk free. At the same time, the risk premium for lending to Ukraine has gone up in line with threats from Russian leaders of a return to large-scale military action against the country, unless their wider security concerns are addressed, by the US government in particular. These developments b...

The president's “de-oligarchisation” drive addresses issues vital for Ukraine’s development, but is unlikely to produce lasting change (December 2021, for the EIU) The president’s claim that a Russian-linked coup is being organised against him may be part of a wider domestic political struggle set off by his “de-oligarchisation” drive.  De-oligarchisation addresses the key developmental issue facing Ukraine. This is that, by restricting political and economic competition, the collusive, behind-the-scenes politics of Ukrainian elites has acted as a fetter on economic growth, helping to explain the country’s low living standards. Concerns have been raised that the policy could be applied selectively to damage the president’s political rivals.  The measures may be too limited to produce lasting change. Moreover, Zelenskyi appears to lack both the resources and the durable domestic political alliances that would be required to affect a long-term transformation of national governan...

Second SBA loan instalment will ease concerns on government’s financing position (for the EIU)   On November 22nd the IMF board signed off on a first review of Ukraine’s economic performance under a stand-by arrangement (SBA) agreed in mid-2020, releasing to the government an additional US$700m loan instalment, and taking the total disbursement under the US$5bn facility to US$2.8bn. The date for programme completion was extended by six months to the middle of 2022.  Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president, welcomed the news and said that the additional funds would be used to support the stability of the financial sector and to tackle the ongoing Covid health emergency. Alongside the central aim of reconciling public finances with debt sustainability goals, SBA loan conditions tie further disbursements to progress on reforms, to ensure the independence of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU, the central bank), to improve governance of the banking sector, and to reform the ju...

Cost-push inflation could undercut the domestic recovery (for the EIU) In September, the average nominal monthly wage rose to HRN14,239 (about US$535), according to the State Statistical Service, up by one-fifth on a year earlier. In the same month, the pace of real wage growth slowed to 6.8% year on year. In 2021, rapid real wage growth has been a key factor driving the domestic recovery from last year’s steep economic contraction, when Ukraine’s real GDP fell by 4%, driven by the impact of the Covid pandemic. However, the pace of growth of the real wage has been slowing since May, with the fortunes of the domestic retail sector following in step. By September, retail turnover, for example, had slowed modestly, to a cumulative 12.2% compared with the first nine months of 2020, from around 14% at the end of the first half. While some labour market developments are likely constrain the recovery of household spending—including a rise in the unemployment rate, and in the stock of unpaid w...

Large-scale migration, a deep recession and severe damage to industrial capacity are among the main effects (for The Chartist) A month and a half into the latest phase of the Russia-Ukraine war, Russia’s attempt to take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, appears to have been checked, and its forces to have withdrawn from Ukraine’s northern regions, leaving large-scale human and material destruction in their wake. The purpose of the withdrawal, according to military analysts, may be to regroup and refocus on expanding Russia’s territorial hold on the eastern Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, parts of which have been under de facto Russian control since 2014-15. While the course of the war will determine the political, social and economic future of the main protagonists—that is, of Ukraine and Russia—and will also have a significant impact across the Eurasian continent more broadly, its outcome remains uncertain. Nonetheless, it is already possible to say something of the scale of the dam...

Working title. “Reform of Ukraine’s national governance institutions: a comparison of the scope, progress and impact of Yatsenyuk’s 2014 ‘de-oligarchisation’ drive after the Euromaidan revolution with that of Zelenskyi following the onset of the global pandemic in 2020”. In short. The research will examine critically the design and implementation of reforms of Ukraine’s national governance structures attempted after the crises of 2014 and 2020, from the perspective of the political economy of institutional development, using a comparative and evaluative approach. Following up on the policy implications of my PhD on the Ukrainian oligarchy as self-reproducing institution, it will contribute to debates on the role of institutional reforms in development in the area where academic research and policy-making meet. Research problem. The problem that my research proposal addresses is that successive attempts to reform Ukraine’s national governance structures—whether encouraged from the ...