World News

There are some statements here that are very refreshing to read in a major Western paper coming from a mainstream Ukrainian politician, cherry-picked below:

“Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, western countries — under the threat of withholding loans — have imposed unacceptable control over Ukraine’s state institutions, state-owned banks, and monopolies, undermining the country’s sovereignty. This is cruel and unjust toward a nation at war.”

Tymoshenko’s argument that Kyiv’s sovereignty is in danger is based mainly on the presence of western experts in advisory groups that select candidates for appointment to Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, High Council of Justice, State Customs Service, State Bureau of Investigation and its Accounting Chamber, as well as anti-corruption agencies.

The westerners, who include a senior official at the UK’s National Audit Office, are able to vote together to veto potential appointees and their votes carry more weight than the Ukrainian experts in the event of a tie.

Tymoshenko hailed [clampdown on the western-backed Nabu and Sapo anti-corruption agencies] as a long overdue step towards curbing western control over vital state institutions that she said was rapidly turning Ukraine into a “disenfranchised colony”.

“Do not tell us that Ukrainians can die for peace in Europe, but are somehow unfit to govern their own country,” she said. “Our western friends had no right to expect that, at one of the most difficult moments in our nation’s history, Ukraine should repay aid or loans with its sovereignty.”

Her critics say that such comments are almost identical to those made by Putin, who has cited international vetting of Ukraine’s state institutions as “evidence” that the country is a western puppet state that poses an existential threat to Moscow.

Tymoshenko shrugged away suggestions that her rhetoric was playing into Russia’s hands, saying instead that Kremlin propaganda was being fuelled by western actions. “Our western friends should not give Putin grounds to say this.”