Dear Readers:
Continuing the discussion from yesterday’s post. We started to read this piece by Nikolai Storozhenko. After talking about the catastrophic losses to the Ukrainian work force, we move on to the issue of economic destruction. Keeping in mind that these numbers and statistics are coming out of Ukraine itself and Ukraine’s friends; so they tend to be more on the optimistic side.
According to the EU, the Gross Domestic Product of Ukraine decreased in 2022 by 29%. For 2023 they cheerfully predict a slight growth of .6% [that’s a decimal point in front of the six]. Concluding that “things are getting better by .6%, with that .6% chipping away at the previous negative 29%.
But is even such a modest growth realistic? Well, that depends on the EU itself. More than half of Ukraine’s export revenue comes from agriculture. Currently, five of Ukraine’s neighbors (Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania) have banned Ukrainian imports of agricultural products. And the EU’s agricultural Commissar Janusz Wojciechowski prognoses that the ban will continue after the June 5 deadline.
In its turn, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts a decrease of 21% in the Ukrainian wheat harvest, which will lead to a 5-million ton deficit in export. This also applies to other grains such as corn and barley.
The war is causing logistical problems for Ukrainian ports: The Ukrainian Agro-Industrial Complex (АПК) requires secure ports to import fertilizer and fuel; and whence to export the product. The ports are all mined, and far from secure. The АПК determines the rest of the economy as well: Industry rises and falls as a function of agriculture. And in 2022 industrial output fell by almost 37%. Most of the suffering happened in Ukraine’s key industries: Metallurgy (-62.5%), Mining (-61.7%), Chemicals (-62%), Machine-Building (-43%).
But, optimistically, things are looking up in the year 2023: The decrease slowed down, only -32% in January, and -26% in February. And March was a relatively good month, with some slight growth seen. On the other hand, things are still not looking very good, considering that industry runs on electricity.
There Is Not Enough Electricity
This upcoming summer, Ukrainians are expecting more rolling blackouts. Such blackouts didn’t happen during this winter, so the Ukrainians forgot about them and got happy, but now they will have to endure them again, just like last summer. Many energy blocks will also have to be shut down for routine repairs.
On the other hand, Ukraine has the option to import electricity. Currently Ukraine is still an electricity-exporter, it sells electricity to its neighbors at a price of 110-140 Euros per Megawatt. (Prices inside Ukraine are usually around 80 Euros per Megawatt.) The Ukrainians profited from the Germans shutting down their Nuclear Power Plant; and starting this past May the Ukrainians sold the Europeans electricity from the Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant. In general, Ukraine has the ambition to be a “battery” of energy to the Europeans. It was not helpful to them when the Russian army took the Zaporozhie Nuclear Power Plant away from them. The loss of this revenue stream is valued at around $1.3 billion American dollars.
Electricity-wise, Ukrainians are left in a bind: Either they keep their own electricity and lose the revenue from exporting it; or they export it and watch their industry suffer; not to mention rolling blackouts.
A Beautiful Future
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes... (The Internationale)
For almost 10 years now [since Maidan], Ukraine has been living in a media-inspired fantasy of a Beautiful Future. The attainment of which requires only obtaining certain things: A,B,C…
“Our boys will return from the front…”
“They will give us javelins…”
“Oh, we could sure use some tanks…”
“We will sign the Association Agreement with the EU…”
“They will give us a visa-free pass…”
“And then, in just a little bit, candidate status to the EU….”
“They will confiscate the Russian assets and give us the money to rebuild…”
And on and on, it’s the same with everything; Industry, agriculture, science and education… A litany of “wishin and hopin…”
[yalensis: The one thing all these Ukrainian wishes have in common, is that they all depend on somebody else doing something for you… Say what you will about Communism, it also promised a future paradise that it couldn’t deliver, but on the other hand it always stressed that you have to do it for yourself, by getting out of bed every morning and working your butt off. Why, the very words of the Communist anthem: Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes (Producers: We will save ourselves…) Good old-fashioned self-reliance, in other words. “Neither God, nor Caesar can help us…” However, the Ukrainian government has twisted those words into: “Caesar will give us everything we need…”]
Storozhenko concludes his piece: The current “main hope” of the Kiev regime is its “spring counter-offensive”. Which has now seamlessly morphed to the “summer counter-offensive”. But, however goes this counter-offensive, it will certainly not return to the Kiev regime that Ukraine on behalf of which it sent its citizens off to their deaths. That Ukraine no longer exists.
And Yuzhanina and the others are forgetting one other little thing: Those able-bodied Ukrainians who have left to work in the EU, they did not leave by themselves; they took their children with them. Most of them will never return; and without children there is no future.
Awful Avalanche 
I regards to Ukrainia’s “leadership”…finally…finally, Norway’s quislings, inhabiting the innermost circle of hell, will have the comfort of having Ukrainia’s “leaders” between them and hell’s hottest pyre. Even Satan himself must be envious of the evil now on display in Kiev.
Kiev, knows the war is a lost and yet the holocaust is fanned, the crematorium fed, the incineration of innocent lives continues…all to profit the financial interests represented in London & DC…such is the “leadership” of my time. At least Hitler had the moral sense to shoot himself, none of these present day war criminals have the least compunction to relieve the earth of their ungodly presence.
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The quislings get to move up a level to make room for the Azovs!
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Sounds like you bought into Putin’s scenarios whole.
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Maybe for the future, all the Ukrainians will want to become actors – when they see how much money Zelensky made last year. But of course, not everyone can play a piano like him.
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I’d pay to see him play a cello, LOL!
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Another excellent short essay.
Alas,,,Ukraine. Who can be sure anyone will want their questionable wheat, etc, from the west in future. Even I know Poland/the EU hid and has now smudged the gamma readings for the time after the armaments explosion.
As for their big freebie from the Soviet Union, the nuclear and conventional power stations. If they join the EU, they do realise that the EU might insist they close them to erect windmills and solar panels,,hey there’s an idea for the possibly redundant agricultural land in the west. Zelinsky, get back here!
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The current leaders of Ukraine should not think about the future of the country, they should think about their own future with the mercenary money gifted by the West and far from their own land.
The ghosts of the victims of this war cannot let them live in peace.
By the way, they say that Bajmuk or Artyomovsk has already fallen, leaving an appalling number of useless deaths.
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Yes! Bakhmut/Artyomovsk officially fell today, May 20, the 1-year anniversary of the fall of Mariupol.
Now the rebuilding has to start, it’s gonna take a lot of work…
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Well, the Ukrainians don’t sell electricity by the megawatt to Europe. A (mega- / kilo-) watt is a measure of power, like horsepower, not energy. Like saying you drive at 70 miles, and forgetting the per hour. No, Ukraine and everyone else sells electrical energy in watt-hours and their multiples. That’s watts times hours, folks. Look at your home meter — it’s labelled kWh. People in general haven’t got the foggiest idea what electrical energy is. Not a clue. I was a utility metering engineer for 22 years, among other duties such as management. Even the people who work at such a place as a utility are for the most part as clueless as the general public, most of them when it comes to spouting the word kilowatt or megawatt as if they knew what they were talking about. Nobody wants to be involved im metering and rates, too difficult. So I was simultaneously a manager and the metering engineer. Now, it’s possible that there is a “demand” charge additional beyond the charge for actual energy that Ukraine sells — “demand” is the, ha ha, “technical” term for power in the electricity business. It’s average power drawn, measured over a specific time period, like 15, 30 or 60 minutes, depending on contract.
It’s like this notion that Ukraine’s busted/blowed-up Russian-designed electrical transformers and switchgear are some kind of indecipherable magic boxes which other countries’ manufacturers couldn’t possibly duplicate. Rubbish. All that’s different is the voltage, which is different from the US, or European, which is different again from each other. This is really trivially basic stuff, has been been known for over a hundred years ever since Tesla/Westinhouse’s AC sytem beat out that semi-fraud Edison and his DC system. Edison was a prototypical lying US propagandic elitist on many matters. Say and do anything to win, even if he knew it was complete nonsense. Money.
In any case, the way things are going, it’ll likely be Chinese equipment when rump Ukraine gets rebuilt, because sure as eggs is eggs, rump Ukraine isn’t going to be a Western property. Sorry BlackRock. The Chinese could whip up anything you want tout-de-suite, they’re a manufacturing powerhouse. Might as well leave Russia to do what it does best — design and build superior weaponry to defend against the sociopathic West, who’ll be trying to be a-bobbin’ and a-weavin’ on cloven hoofs looking for a chink in the Russkie armour. Because losing smarts badly when you’re a power-hungry nutter, and you are determined to get revenge. That was when Ali gave his opponent the chop from nowhere, as they stumbled around in a blind rage of impotence against real skill.
Bakhmut is lost to Ukraine, and that ever-jolly joking troll Prigozhin told the world to give Biden a pat on his bald head as he sits in Tokyo at the G7 meeting, lording it over his boot-licking vassals. What a hoot! And there’s not a damn thing that mean prick Biden and his acolytes like Nuland aand Blinken can do about the insult except fume.
So, now NATO’ll send secondhand F-16 Fightin’ Falcons to Ukraine to be turned into scrap suitable for the manufacture of aluminum foil. Zaluhny or whatever his name is, the big Ukrainian military cheese, is apparently dead as well. Hasn’t been seen for several days after visiting the front, and likely didn’t leave with his boots on. Either that, or he’s sipping pina coladas on a Mexican beach, after having said to himself — phuck this shambles — and getting himself the hell out while the going is good. This seems to be Zelensky’s plan too. Where will he waft off to after Tokyo for a free meal and a begging gig? Only The Shadow knows.
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Thank you for your technical education, Beluga. Alas, you are right, most people (including myself) are clueless about what electricity actually is. And this despite the fact that I took a college course in it, as part of my computer science training. Of course, the focus there was on digital, and basically the only thing that mattered for the purposes of passing that course, was understanding transistors and logic gates. So, for our projects we just used batteries and breadboarded computer chips, timers and that sort of thing. The teaching assistant helped us set up the power supply so that we wouldn’t blow up our boards, and could focus on the truth tables and logic circuitry.
I never actually could wrap my feeble brain around the underlying concepts like voltage, current, resistance, etc. That’s why people like Tesla are so great.
Anyhow, regarding Zaluzhny I heard a lot of “rumors” on the internet yesterday. People stating, without any proof or links, that Zaluzhny was killed on a certain day, or was seriously wounded. Dima, on his channel (Military Summary) stated that Zaluzhny was “in reanimation” in a Kiev hospital, with both legs missing.
Dima, being a native Russian speaker, a word of explanation: Despite the science-fiction sounding term to American ears, “reanimation” is just the Russian word for the ICU. It’s the room in a Russian hospital where patients go to get “reanimated”, but not in a Futurama kind of way, LOL.
I am sure everybody wishes Zaluzhny a speedy recovery…
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I wonder if Ukrainian sentiment will turn negative on the West after we cut and run. Could that anger be refocused on USA? Is Ukrainian anger a zero sum game or a inexhaustible resource. How much hate is there in borderlands?
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