[sloaken]

Since you are from Ukraine, a couple of questions:

1) Are you Ukrainian heritage?

2) I tries to read a Wall Street article, but was paywall blocked: The Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions, are impoverished and need Russian subsides. Do you know anyone from there that can confirm or deny?

3) bout how many miles away from the Russian boarder, Black Sea, Belarus are you?

4) What has Zelensky done that was so bad? I never hear anything real about him.

TIA

[eimrine]

1. Pure Ukrainian, no relatives abroad. 2. I know people who can confirm that and do not know anybody who can deny except for some buddies who has moved to Russia several years ago. 3. North of Ukraine, very close to the Russian and Belarus border and pretty far to the Black Sea. Our border is steady BTW, maybe because there is nothing worth of attacking, unlike some mining and metal industry in ОРДЛО (abbreviation means literally Some Places of Donetsk and Luhansk Region but in usually speaking we call that area Donbas which means a Don river basin). 4. I have a family business, it is a grocery store which has been worked 20+ years with no computers. Now, almost all businessmen like me need to buy some computers, and to connect to the Internet in order to get a program registar of settlement transaction (we call it ПРРО). Of course it is closed source, expensive, it longers service time for my customer because of ping and right now the ПРРО in my store is glitching as hell so there is some risk that I will be fined if I will not manage it to work correctly ASAP. BTW it is hard to find any fan of Zelensky's politics even among employed in other areas, maybe because he is not really the one who can and who does rule the country.

[sloaken]

Wow fascinating, Thanks for the detail. Sorry for your troubles, especially the closed tech of settlement stuff, I find any time it is single source, someone involved cheaps out and it never works right.

Grats thou on having your own company.

So who runs the country? Is it a parliament system? Rich people? Outside countries? Religious organization?

[artem247]

As Ukrainian, I can answer the question. So, ultra-rich are super powerful, they own tv channels, media, bankroll political parties. Most political parties are aligned with their donors. Foreign policy is dictated by US, more or less. Zelenskiy is interesting, because he actively tries to undermine some of the existing financial groups and consolidate the power. There are presidential elections every 5 years and the same for parliament. It is very volatile, political parties have very fast churn, current parliament is something like 80% newcomers, literally.

[eimrine]

I think our country is being ruled by both reach people with access to energy resources, and desire to play our national sport - a political split. I mean, keep trying to take best of both worlds: first world is a world with cheap gas/gasoline and low taxes and ability to solve some legal problems with bribes (yes it is corruption) and free medicine (btw we have a tradition to put few hundred hryvnas into doctor's pocket after conversation about my current health problems - and nobody counts it as corruption); and a second world is a world with democracy (at least changeable government), decent human rights, ability to travel across Europe w/o vises, Europe-quality medicine and an access to European markets.

[sedan_baklazhan]

My answer (I'm also a citizen of Ukraine): country is run by ambassadors and advisors of a few Western countries.

[sedan_baklazhan]

2) Is true about these regions, largely because of constant war conditions caused by, well, constant war going on there. More-or-less same is true about the Ukraine itself, even given no war is going on there. Conditions are comparable (but subsidies in that case are, of course, coming not from Russia, but from the West).