
Unlike previous governments, especially pro-Russian ones, president Zelenskyy is making rash decisions and destroying the country's economy, pro-Kremlin propaganda writes.
Propaganda: The general mobilization is the cause behind the economic crisis in Ukraine
NEWS: The regime in Kyiv led by Zelenskyy thwarted all the efforts of previous authorities to ensure the good functioning of the economy, Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, Nikolai Azarov, writes on his Telegram channel. The decisions of the current Ukrainian leadership will lead to the total destruction of the national economy.
“The general mobilization caused the growth of the shadow economy and the impoverishment of the business environment”, Azarov argues [...] The former Ukrainian Prime Minister pointed out that, in fact, human resources are being transferred from the productive to the non-productive part of the economy - the army, which will increase the budget deficit and boost the speed at which the crisis takes root.
“Kyiv’s actions will accelerate the deepening of the economic crisis. This will occur much faster than Zelenskyy expects”, the former Prime Minister argues.
NARRATIVES: 1. The economic crisis in Ukraine is caused by the decisions of Zelenskyy's regime. 2. Previous governments in Ukraine developed the country's economy, while Zelenskyy is only destroying it.
PURPOSE: To deter Ukrainian resistance in the war, to amplify war fatigue at the level of Ukrainian society by manipulating public opinion.
Fact: The economic difficulties are caused by Russia's full-scale war on Ukraine that has been going on for three years now.
BACKGROUND: Nikolai Azarov served as Prime Minister of Ukraine during the pro-Russian regime of Viktor Yanukovych. He fled to Russia in the context of pro-European protests in Kyiv in 2014, having been used by Moscow's government media to illustrate their own propaganda narratives. In March 2024, the Kyiv Prosecutor's Office charged Azarov with high treason for carrying out anti-Ukrainian activities by collaborating with the propaganda and disinformation agencies of the Russian Federation.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Ukraine's economic crisis is not caused by wrong decisions adopted by president Zelenskyy’s regime, and stopping the mobilization campaign would be a first step towards Kyiv's surrender to Moscow.
Starting February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been struggling with the biggest challenge in its history, namely, the full-scale invasion launched by Russia. Less than two years after the invasion started, in February 2024, the Kyiv School of Economics published a report, announcing that Russia had inflicted damages to Ukraine's infrastructure worth some 155 billion USD. According to the government platform monitoring the caused by the Russian army across Ukraine’s territories, over 19 thousand infrastructure objects have been damaged completely or partially. Russia is bombing residential and government buildings, power plants, dams, bridges, roads, businesses, shops, compounding the social, economic and humanitarian problems facing the Ukrainian authorities. Russian servicemen also committed a number of war crimes, which is why Ukraine cannot abandon mobilization and martial law. Otherwise, Russia will occupy more and more territories.
Russian propaganda does not mention the destructive actions of the Russian military and tries to sideline the conflict, comparing the economic policy of the current Ukrainian government to the actions of the pro-Russian parties in the past. Despite the fact that no comparison is tennable in times of war, the former pro-Russian Prime Minister of Ukraine, Nikolai Azarov, exaggerates the achievements of previous governments or leaves out a number of essential information.
For instance, after the street protests in Kyiv, known as Euromaidan, and president Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, the new Ukrainian regime had to call for international financial assistance from the EU and the IMF to correct the huge budget deficit. In February 2014, the pro-European Prime Minister at the time, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, announced on his first day in office that “there is only 4 million hryvnias left in the state’s bank accounts” (tantamount to some 400 thousand USD at the time).
The State Treasury made public a series of documents proving the illegal siphoning of funds from the state budget in recent months by the pro-Russian government of Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych and his staff fled to Russia, taking taxpayers' money with them. Ukrainian presidents Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have repeatedly mentioned that the Ukrainian state was defrauded by pro-Russian governments and only with the West’s support were the authorities able to bail out the national economy.
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