Muristek
There's an easy way to help Ukraine without military escalation: cancel its foreign debt | Owen Jones
A country battered and bruised by Russia’s invading forces needs space to breathe – not demands from hedge funds
A bloodied man empties his wallet to his creditor while being mercilessly attacked by an unprovoked assailant. This is the plight of Ukraine, which recently made a scheduled interest payment to private lenders as tanks rolled over its land and missiles struck its cities. Even before Vladimir Putin started bombing apartment blocks and maternity hospitals, Ukraine was Europe’s poorest country as measured by GDP per capita – significantly poorer than Albania. Yet this war-ravaged country is saddled with unsustainable debt – and as the piles of rubble grow, so do the repayments. That’s debt for Ukraine, but profits for western hedge funds. War, for some, is the ultimate money-spinner.
Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – triggering a conflict in the east that had claimed thousands of lives before the current invasion – Ukraine has been forced to borrow $61bn (£46bn) from external lenders, according to calculations by the Jubilee Debt Campaign; a small sliver has been paid off, but what remains represents about a third of the country’s total economy. Ukraine was due to cough up $7.3bn this year alone – more than its annual education budget. For a rich country blessed with peace, that would be manageable, but Ukrainians are poorer today than when the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago. At least $100bn worth of damage has already been inflicted to infrastructure – from roads to bridges, hospitals to schools – and, as you read this, that figure only mounts. Yet almost all of the financial assistance being given to Ukraine is in the form of loans. Precious funds will be diverted from rebuilding a shattered country, instead filling the coffers of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and private bondholders.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...