Ukraine has UAH 10 bln to renew Donbas, president says

The Ukrainian government has accumulated more than UAH 10 bln (about USD 450 mln) to renew infrastructure ruined by warfare in the Donbas region, President Petro Poroshenko said in a television interview on Oct. 13. The EU and U.S. are ready to offer four to five times more, he said. Germany alone is ready to offer EUR 500 mln, he said. “We will do this, but there needs to be peace, renewing the Ukrainian flag and Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said. “I don’t have any doubt that they won’t survive in this situation.”

Zenon Zawada: Earmarking money from the Ukrainian budget to finance the renewal of infrastructure in Donbas is a highly unpopular idea among Ukrainians, who are suffering economically. Poroshenko is fulfilling the wishes of Western leaders in doing this. Yet we don’t see it as a make-or-break issue for Poroshenko politically. He can survive this.

The make-or-break issues regarding the Donbas are (1) holding special elections based on the French Morel plan, as Poroshenko is apparently trying to do, and (2) establishing the Donbas special status, even based on the Minsk accords. It’s these two tasks that Poroshenko is pursuing (at the orders of the West) that have the potential to ignite civil strife and threaten his presidency.