There is a difference in the scale of what’s going on, to start with. I mean, if Ukraine decides to build infrastructure for a big project like Euro 2012, then it’s going to be the lot of it – airports, stadiums, roads an hotels, and all in just under two years.
There is a difference in the scope of the problems: if we have a hotel shortage, the media will call it “a crisis”, and the football teams will choose to live outside of Ukraine because of it.
The vocabulary of the headlines in Ukraine and Poland is different. The worlds “boycott,” “political football,” as well as “racism” are next to none in headlines about the Polish preparations. But never will you see a headline like “Cheer up, says PM on Euro 2012 city tour” about Ukraine.
But you do about Poland.
There is a different degree of drama, too. In Ukraine, if you have protests, they will be bare-breasted, and the protesters will damage the trophy while they’re at it, as well.
But I believe the biggest drama is yet to hit the headlines. Ukraine has spent $13.6 billion (Hr 108.8 billion) on preparations to the championship, the government said. For comparison, this year’s gross domestic product is expected to be $163 billion, according to the World Bank forecast. The expenses make up a huge chunk of that.
Because of the expenses, Ukraine is now more often compared to Greece than Poland, actually. Greece spent 9 to 11 billion euros on preparations to the Olympics, depending on what source you use for assessment. Only a fraction of it was recouped though tourism.
Some in Ukraine say this was the source of Greece’s economic decline. “Greece is an example for Ukraine: problems in Greek economy started after the Olympics, and their consequences are reaped not just by Greece, but the whole of Europe,” said recently Oleksandr Sugoniako, Head of Association of Ukrainian Banks.
Is it just scare-mongering or is it true that Ukraine cannot afford the luxury of Euro? Well, the value of government bonds stood at Hr 18 billion in 2008. By now, the figure is Hr 170 – or nearly 10 times more! About 80 percent of the new internal debt was used to finance preparations for the football championship.
The nation will have to pay Hr 1 billion in interest on this debt for years to come, an economist said recently. We can only count on making 500 million euro or so off the tourists. That’s not to say some people haven’t got rich off it: an estimated 40 percent of the money set off for Euro 2012 projects allegedly landed in someone’s pockets as payoffs.
Of course, all contracts were freed from tender procedures after Viktor Yanukovych arrived to power, appointed his Cabinet and reshaped the parliament in 2010. As a result, sweet insider deals on Euro-2012-related sites have been a great subject of investigations for journalists, and even some criminal cases have been started at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv,
for example.
It’s not all that bad, though. There are silver linings in the form of new infrastructure like stadiums and roads, as well as a bonus of Ukraine appearing on the world travel map.
But the Euro preparations have really highlighted all the problems the nation still has: extreme division on important issues, politicized justice, decision-making and economy, corruption and so on. Poland, on the other hand, has come out looking like the proverbial good cop in this duo.
But the roles weren’t always that clear. Poland appeared on my personal map over 20 years ago, because a friend’s mum, a history professor who could not support her family with her university job, was making her living at the time by traveling to Poland to sell anything she could lay her hands on.
I remember that the old Soviet-made irons were particularly in demand, for some reason. She brought back clothes and other goods that were in short supply on this side of the border.
The professor’s trading success just reflected the fact that both nations were similarly destitute at the time. But, of course, they chose very different paths since then, which resulted in a huge contrast in the current states of the nations.
For me, the contrast was epitomized last year by Lech Walesa, a former Polish president. “If I had another presidential term, I would not allow Poland to join the European Union without Ukraine,” he told Den newspaper in Kyiv last September.
The Grand Canyon of a divide between the nations is reflected in this quote. Poland is a part of Europe, and Ukraine is still mulling whether that’s the way to go. It also shows that Poland feels its position there is strong. Polish politicians seem to have a concern not just for personal well-being, but for other things, including neighbor countries. The difference here is immense.
But despite the doom and gloom of the present, I still believe Ukraine will pull it off – not just Euro 2012, I mean. The nation has proved over years to have talent, dare, resource and determination – they are just all tricky to mobilize.
I got a glimpse of the nation’s cheek and talent in recent news that Ukraine has found its own little oracle who will predict the result of the matches for Euro 2012, to replace the deceased Paul, the German octopus.
It’s a pig, it will live somewhere in the Kyiv fan zone, and it has no name as far as I know. Choosing a pig also shows we’re a practical nation: if we don’t like his predictions, we’re simply going to eat it.
After all, it’s not for nothing that we got a reputation of Europe’s greatest pork fat eaters.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
