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9/18/17

Ukraine: Something Is Happening Here... - by Kenneth Courtis

Ukraine’s President, 51-year old Petro Poroshenko – or Porky, as he is known to all Ukrainians – is at single digits in the polls. With elections scheduled for 2019 that cannot sit well with the oligarch-turned-president.

But in their assessment of him, Ukrainians are simply echoing the disdain that, all smooth-talking rhetoric aside, he has shown them. Remember that he promised to divest himself of certain assets – presumably acquired “legally” once he was elected.

What has happened is the opposite. His group has acquired more state assets at below rock-bottom prices. His firms are already lined up at the trough to gobble up all kinds of stuff in the coming wave of privatizations that the IMF has instructed the county to carry out.

Porky is pretty much the chocolate king of Eastern Europe and the CIS. People on the ground tell me that his three most profitable chocolate factories are in, yes, Russia…

All that sweet stuff can’t obscure the harsh realities. Real wages of workers have been chopped by more than half over the last three years. The emerging middle classes have been crushed.
 
Read more: Ukraine: Something Is Happening Here... - The Globalist

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