Ukrainian forecasts

Yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in an interview with 1+1 TV that Ukraine will stop buying Russian gas in 5 years. He promised that the country would not freeze this winter, although it would not be a warm one.

According to optimistic forecasts of the Cabinet for the Ukrainian economy until 2017, economic growth next year will be 2%. The IMF has changed its forecast of the economic fall from 6.5% to 7.25% in 2014 in the light of a possible renewal of war on Ukrainian territory next year.

In the context of Ukraine's need for new financial tranches from the IMF, an agreement was reached at the NATO summit last week to send weapons and military instructors from Poland, the U.S. and France to Ukraine. Such promises provoke concerns, considering that peace in the south-east of Ukraine is still fragile.
Vadim Solovyov, deputy head of the State Duma committee for constitutional legislature and state construction, supposes that the federalization of Ukraine would be an optimistic forecast to settle the situation: "The best variant would be to settle all the differences at the negotiating table and in the legal field. So Ukraine would remain a state, a federal state, with autonomies - the Donetsk Republic, the Luhansk Republic and so on."

One of the main conditions for resolution of the crisis is granting the Russian language a special status, says Solovyov: "Why, knowing that about 18 million people in Ukraine speak Russian, that is about 40% of the population, maybe even more, would the Russian language not get state status?"

The deputy head of the Duma committee is adamant that the cause of such behaviour by the Ukrainian authorities in the West of Ukraine was "restoration and domination of Ukrainian nationalism with a flavour of fascism."

"Bandera formations are trying to impose their culture, their mentality, their faith, although Ukraine has basically two peoples. There is Eastern Ukraine with a Russian Orthodox soul. There is Catholic Western Ukraine. It is like the Czech and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia. And they showed how to separate without any problems, solve everything peacefully," Solovyov offered as examples.

In his words, the tensions in Ukraine have turned into such serious differences that the formation of a federative state, taking into account the interests of western and eastern Ukrainians, has become the best solution. Solovyov predicts that President Poroshenko will continue the "Bandera" course, "it would end up with formation of two states, in fact, then, a move towards the legal side, and Ukraine will split into two countries, Ukraine itself and Novorossiya." He urged Poroshenko to understand the situation and find a fair solution at the negotiating table.