Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted his European allies Thursday for what he portrayed as the continent’s slow, fragmented and inadequate response to Russia’s invasion nearly four years ago and its continued international aggression.
Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zelenskyy listed a litany of grievances and criticisms of Europe that he said have left Ukraine at the mercy of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid an ongoing U.S. push for a peace settlement.
You mean to say western countries are betraying their ally?! No way!!! /s
At what point have we betrayed Ukraine? European countries are very far from perfect but we did not betray Ukraine, sure we could have done more but at this point only the European Union is footing the bill for the war. I do not see China, India, Brazil, South Africa or Japan for example sending billions in aid to Ukraine, let alone Trump.
This Month:
I hereby also announce $100 billion in support of Ukraine. Announcements aren’t worth much.
Literally since it is an independent country. Ukraine was, already well before 2022, the poorest country in Europe. The EU-exported model of neoliberalism, austerity and privatization led to catastrophic results for the Ukrainian economy, leading to drug abuse, crime, lack of healthcare, malnutrition, violence and unemployment, resulting in net population losses of above 10 million between 1991 and 2022, counting increased mortality, mass emigration and lack of births. Europe literally hollowed out Ukraine and made it desperately poor.
The same EU exported model that made Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as rich as they are today. But also what made Hungary or Greece what they are today, right?
Turns out corruption and internal politics have more influence than anything, but the EU has been a net gain overall for any country that actually gave it an honest try.
Romania and Bulgaria are rich? I’m Spanish, a country by no means rich, and we have tons of Romanian immigrants because the working conditions there are extremely hard, and they suffered similar issues:
This is especially true for Bulgaria, they lost like a freaking third of the population since 1990 (from 9mn to 6.4mn in 2024). By what metric are they rich? GDP per capita? How about access to housing, to healthcare, to quality education, the ability to stay in rural areas with non-decrepit infrastructure…
Regarding Poland, the country may be richer as a whole (again, using GDP per capita as metric), but are the people faring better? Look at the share of national income by the bottom 50% of the people:
Relative richness, compared to how they started in the 90’s after communism. In 2000 Spain had an average salary of 1443€ and Romania 143€. In 2018 Spain grew to 2295€ but Romania to 965€ an almost 7 times increase.
Current minimum salary in Romania is 814€. It was 40€ in 2000. Your average IT person in Romania right now makes ~70% as a much as a Spaniard but their rent and prices are less than half compared to Spain. Lower skill jobs are still lagging, but it’s been getting better and better.
All of this success is partly due to the EU pulling strings on Romanian politicians in exchange for funds and partly having a political and justice system that has mostly been doing acceptable. If you compare 90’s Ukraine and Romania they had a similar shitty start and the same access to opportunities including the EU. One embraced that and the other did not.
Great job ignoring the healthy populational growth during socialism in Romania followed by demographic catastrophe since 1990.
You’re being dishonest by cherrypicking year 2000, the 1990s in Romania were horrifying due to the debt given by the IMF (western-aligned organization) in order to crush the welfare state in Romania and adopt austerity policy as I discussed. You cherrypicked the year 2000 because that’s more or less when the super high inflation of the 1990s started to balance, and you’re talking in Euros and not in the local currency because exchange rates were astonishingly low due to currency devaluation. Let’s see how well Romania fared in the 1990s during capitalism!
This is EXACTLY what I mean by the European betrayal: Romanians were promised wealth comparable to western Europe, and instead were met with deindustrialization, destruction of welfare, horrifying levels of inflation, and sudden unimaginable unemployment after half a century without unemployment. It’s literally western-funded loans in the 1980s that started to crash the Romanian economy. You cherrypick two convenient dates, ignore the millions of lives lost and emigrated, and say “look, more Euro is better” ignoring that people literally have to flee the country due to the terrible economy.