How Ukraine Lost its Future: From China’s Bridge to U.S. Military Hub (1-قىسىم)
ئاپتور: ئۇيغۇر تەتقىقات ئىنىستىتۇتى
مەنبە: uysi.org

As the endgame looms over the proxy war in Ukraine, the catastrophic costs of the unwarranted conflict continue to soar. There was an alternative future for Ukraine, based on development. But it was purposely denied.
Ukraine before and after the war.
Since the onset of hostilities in Ukraine three years ago, I have argued that, whatever its stated rationale, it would “penalize severely Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and the NATO, Europe, developing economies and the global economy.”
The war in Ukraine was not only avoidable but there was an alternative and more peaceful future. It was purposely collapsed because it did not fit the neoconservatives’ plans for Ukraine.
Zelensky’s dream of Ukraine as China’s bridge to Europe
Even as Ukraine-Russian tensions began to escalate a decade ago, trade ties between Ukraine and China expanded after President Viktor Yanukovych’s state visit to Beijing in 2013. Four years later, Ukraine, now under President Poroshenko, joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And in 2019, China bypassed Russia as Ukraine’s biggest single trading partner.
Together, China, Ukraine’s new economic partner, and Russia, its historical trade partner, absorbed a fourth of Ukraine's exports. That figure was over six times the share of the U.S.
Ukraine’s major trading partners, 2021
Source: The Observatory of Economic Complexity, Mar 1, 2022
In June 2021, China and Ukraine signed a deal to strengthen cooperation in multiple areas, particularly in infrastructure financing and construction. In 2021, overall trade boomed to $19 billion, having soared 80% since 2013. To Ukraine’s President Zelensky, the BRI meant an alternative future that would be more stable and prosperous. And so, in a phone conversation with President Xi Jinping, he called China “Ukraine’s No. 1 trade and economic partner in the world,” expressing hope that Ukraine could become “a bridge to Europe for Chinese business.”
In just a year, major Chinese companies started operations in construction, food and telecoms. New contracts signed by Chinese companies in the Ukrainian engineering market exceeded $2 billion for two consecutive years.
But this was not the future that was planned for Ukraine in the White House.
Hammering Ukraine into a military-industrial hub
From 1991 to 2014, the U.S. flooded Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance, even though it wasn’t a NATO member. By 2021, over $2.7 billion was added to the figure, plus over a billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund.
To Erik Prince, it heralded a great money-making opportunity, Iraq déjà vu. As the founder of the private U.S. military contractor, then known as Blackwater, Prince had long supplied mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon and State Department for covert operations, including torture and assassinations. In early 2020, Prince outlined a roadmap for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defense consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues.
Prince desperately needed the Motor Sich factory, which already had a deal with Beijing Skyrizon Aviation. The Chinese company had bought its 41% stake already in 2017. However, Biden's election win undermined Prince’s plan. Moreover, his Ukrainian partners got under criminal investigation for alleged efforts to sway the 2020 presidential election and the investigation included President Biden’s son and his stakes in Ukraine. Washington blacklisted the Chinese firms involved, then the Ukrainian court froze their holdings for reasons of “national security” and Chinese companies and dealmakers were sanctioned.
Nonetheless, the idea of a Ukrainian military-industrial complex remained attractive to the U.S. and Ukraine, where the state-controlled defense sector employed more than 1 million people and had been moving, with rising U.S. influence, toward military procurement since 2014.