Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada member and Batkivshchina faction leader, Yulia Timoshenko, slammed the country’s top politicians, claiming that the domestic economy is threatened with ruin because Ukrainian politicians are baffled on how to collaborate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"Cooperation with IMF in times of various crises, whether economic, financial, domestic or global terms, is the right path to take. However, depending on the leader’s intelligence and brainpower, this could turn out to be either beneficial for the country or it may cause economic devastation because of ignorance, lack of education, or even indifference, which is what’s happening now," TASS cited her as saying.
Timoshenko recalled that during the global financial meltdown of 2009 a memorandum was signed with IMF setting gas prices for low-income families at 484 hryvnias ($20) per 1000 cubic meters, and at 732 hryvnias ($30) for the wealthy. "Today, the gas price is 6,789 hryvnias (more than $270) per 1000 cubic meters," she stressed.
"The government I headed would have never tolerated such appalling pensions and wages, or such horrifying and baseless tariffs, which is currently fueling large-scale corruption for the country’s ruling clans," Timoshenko said.
She laid the blame for the country’s social ills, pension and wage freezes and a three-fold plunge in the hryvnia on President Pyotr Poroshenko, former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, "who had been torturing the country for two years," and the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Groysman, "who has picked up Yatsenyuk’s course."
"The administration’s current policy is inadmissible, harsh, irresponsible, and profoundly unprofessional. It has resulted in a catastrophic economic slump and a situation where people cannot even afford to buy food," she added.
