When Z says “aid” he means weapons and ammo, not foreign soldiers. The EU, IFIs and the rest of the world can handle the macro-stability support stuff.
We need weapons. Lots of them. Yesterday.
Two years ago today.
Not so fast, says Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blurted out yesterday that Ukraine’s government is attacking Christians.
“The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They're not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it." - Marjorie Taylor Greene (c/o The War Room)
Next up: online gambling. A nice run-down here.
Revenues of gambling business leaders in Ukraine increased 28-fold in 2023 to UAH 54.9 billion compared to UAH 1.9 billion in 2022, according to Opendatabot data.
The top list includes nine online casinos, two of which are also engaged in betting activities, and on lottery operator. While in 2022, only a third of businesses from the Index managed to make a profit - we are talking about SpaceX, UkrGame Technology, and Nate's APPS - last year was profitable for all companies in the top 10.
SpaceX (known as Cosmolot), owned by Sergey Potapov and British businessman Arnulf Damerau, became the leader in the gambling business. The company's revenue in 2023 exceeded the previous year's figures by 51 times, reaching UAH 27.95 billion.
Ukraine Economic Outlook, meanwhile, illustrates macro-financial stability support to Ukraine over the past two years. Team EU in 2023 provided about double the amount of Team USA.
Total external receipts for 2023 amounted to UAH 2.1 trillion (equivalent to $42.5 billion). As for external financing, in December, the Ministry of Finance planned to attract $3 billion from the United States, but the money never arrived. However, the ministry was able to attract about $5 billion, which made it possible to cover financing needs with a margin — from the IMF ($900 million), the European Commission (€1.5 billion), Japan ($2.2 billion), the World Bank ($900 million) and $32 million from other partner countries.
This made it possible to close the financial a year without payment delays.
Total volume of financing of the UAH state budget in 2023 amounted to UAH 2.1 trillion, or $58 billion in foreign currency equivalent, of which $15.5 billion were government bonds (27%) and $42.5 billion — external assistance (73%). Ukraine’s largest donors were: European Union - $19.5 billion (46%), USA - $11 billion (26%), IMF - $4.5 billion (11%) and Japan - $3.6 (9%).