For Valentine's Day, the U.S. Embassy recorded a “Valentine” video , declaring its love for Ukraine and its people . Someone considered it touching, others controversial. Meanwhile in Ukraine not only the political but also thececonomic situation began to deteriorate. " Naftogaz " has restricted the supply of gas to the regions that have the greatest debt for fuel, and the country's customs authorities started to delay clearance of imported petroleum products. The oil market of Ukraine has developed a tense situation involving a sharp rise in the dollar and the new currency purchase order introduced by the National Bank of Ukraine on February 6.
Leonid Vardomsky, head of Post-Soviet Studies at the Department of International Economic and Political Studies of the Institute of Economics, forecasts that ”in terms of anarchy, the situation will deteriorate. But the National Bank of Ukraine did well to lower the hryvnia. When a country's exports fall by 7.8% in one year, the regulation course, its reduction must be probably the major resource of enhancing export activity for Ukraine. But this is not enough. Then it will be very difficult to hold this rate without interventions, and the gold reserves in Ukraine are limited.”
In Mr Vardomsky’s opinion, “the political forces want to go all the way to victory, so the winner takes all. And, on the other hand, it destroys the economy and creates new grounds for deepening and broadening the conflict. Unfortunately, this political conflict can't be stopped. They should negotiate and seek some compromises. But most importantly, there are no ideas. There is only one idea - to join the EU as if it will solve all the problems of the country immediately, or shift the country's problems to Brussels, and they will be the one to decide what Ukraine should produce, give them money, develop their production and so on. But in my opinion, this is a naive approach. Therefore, the search for compromise in the struggle of political forces and the search for variants of Ukraine's development in its particular situation, when there is the East, the West, there is the South, and they all have quite different positions, they have different identities, so it is also a very difficult task.”
So far, according to Mr Vardomsky’s data, the situation in Ukraine keeps aggravating: “the budget deficit keeps growing. The hryvnia's recession may get out of control. Money won't flow in because they have no government, the United States has mentioned it, and Russia emphasized it, and the EU as well. But who should they deal with? The major problem for now is the achievement of political stability in the country.”
Vladimir Voyush, Coordinator of Economic Programs of the social movement of ‘Ukrainian Choice, states that “in the recent weeks, the precipitation of the national currency led to panic at the exchange market and outflow of hryvnia client money from the banking sector. A number of major banks lost more than billion hryvnia deposits each. The banking system miht be paralyzed. As for foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank, they reduced by 12.8% since December; and today there is $17.8 billion. But the National Bank took the necessary steps at the very last moment to prevent panic and calm down markets by a decrease of dollar rate. The National Bank came to a flexible exchange rate to dollar; such emergency measures of the National Bank were absolutely necessary. “
Speaking about the consequences of the situation over the national currency rate for a common citizen, Mr Voyush says it led to a growth of prices for some kinds of goods. First of all, this touched the gasoline prices, as well as prices for some imported goods purchased through Internet. Why is it so? Because there is the quickest turnover at the market. As for spheres where commodity stock is present, the price increase will continue gradually there. Therefore, we have an additional factor of inflation. The inflation is connected with failure of the national currency rate. And it will hit everyone’s pockets.”
