The president of a miscellaneous Global South nation was walking along the beach with Xi Jinping.
“Xi,” said the President, sometimes it feels like you’re there for us, but sometimes it feels like you’ve abandoned us.
Xi bade the President to look back along the two sets of tracks they had made on the beach.
“My like-minded good friend,” said Xi Jinping, “the Chinese people have been walking hand-in-hand with you ever since we stood up in 1949.”
“But Xi,” said the President again, “sometimes one pair of footsteps veers away.”
“Those are the times you turned to the Americans.” Xi pointed to where the straying footsteps came to an abrupt stop at an ice cream truck. “But we have always been here to resume walking together once your people grew weary of being fed junk food.”
I think we’re missing a couple of nuances here, no? Although it’s a stretch to call them nuance. The way Ukrainian rulers have been making money has been through privatization. And because there’s so much privatization we need to look at who owns Ukraine’s economy. It’s only escalated since Russia invaded, with national assets being sold off to foreign private sectors so cheaply that one has to wonder why they did it when the gains are a drop in the bucket compared to the direct aid they’ve been getting from Western public sectors.
If Ukraine emerges from this conflict with its own sovereignty, it’ll be sovereignty over a flag, a presidential palace and a state framework that protects foreign companies’ investments from hungry Ukrainians.