MINSK, 16 May (BelTA) – The West will take out everything it can out of Ukraine, Americanologist Malek Dudakov said on the air of the Belarus 1 TV channel when asked about how Ukraine is going to pay for the lend-lease, BelTA has learned.
"Of course, $40 billion is a lot of money, especially for the Ukrainian budget, which is certainly not big. The West will take everything it can out of Ukraine. First of all, this is agricultural produce as the food crisis is looming in the world, and Ukraine, of course, is one of the breadbaskets of Europe. Industrial assets left over from the Soviet era are not of much interest to Western investors because they are in a deplorable state and they are more trouble than they are worth,” he said.
Malek Dudakov commented on the popular view that Ukraine might trade in territories. “I think, everything depends on the outcome of the current Ukrainian crisis. The Western world blames Russia for violating the principle of the inviolability of borders. But if they take some territories for themselves at the end of the Russian special operation, they will show, once again, their own hypocrisy," he said. “As for infrastructure projects, military bases and so on, we saw all this long before the special operation. Therefore, no additional money was needed to be earmarked. Ukraine lost its subjectivity and therefore, what can I say, the country was already willing to give anything to the West. I think that this is unlikely to be regarded as a certain concession rather as something going with the turf. Ukraine was and is under the external control of Western countries."
