The Ukrainian leadership has “sold out” the country while wasting billions in foreign assistance and bankrupting the economy, former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has said.

Speaking in an interview aired on Thursday, Azarov, who held his post between 2010 and 2014 and fled to Russia after the Maidan coup, recalled that while Kiev’s Western backers had poured vast sums into Ukraine over the past three years, local officials have failed to use the money to improve the country.

“This enormous amount of money, if it had been put to good use, could have transformed Ukraine,” he said, adding that over more than a decade since the Western-backed coup in Kiev, the Ukrainian government has failed to build even a single metro station.

The Kiev leadership has also done incredible damage to the country’s economy, Azarov noted. “The homeland has long since been sold out. Its natural resources are sold – actually, just given away. Industry is sold, agriculture is sold, everything is gone, you have nothing,” he said, addressing fellow Ukrainians.

He questioned the purpose of continued fighting with Russia, stating: “What are you defending? [Vladimir] Zelensky? Is he really so dear to you that hundreds of thousands of people should be laid in the grave?”

Opposition lawmaker and former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Timoshenko told The Times this week that US and EU influence had reached “unacceptable” levels and that the country was becoming “a disenfranchised colony.”

Earlier this year, Washington and Kiev signed a minerals deal that gives the US preferential access to Ukrainian natural resources in exchange for continued military support, despite concerns that the agreement would undermine the country’s sovereignty.

Ukraine is also plagued by rampant corruption, with a 2024 poll indicating that 71.6% of Ukrainians list graft among the five biggest national problems.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has on numerous occasions suggested that Ukraine would certainly collapse without the military and economic assistance from the West.

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