I would like to share with you a couple of photos from my trip to Ukraine. I expected a really poor country with messy economy and non-functioning public services. Ukraine is actually unofficially in war with Russia and is bleeding lots of money from its budgets every day. However, it surprised me how beautiful, peaceful and well-organized country (well not in east) it actually is. Please the photos below. It truly does not look like a country with a GDP per capita 6.3 times lower than that of USA or country with a GDP per capita comparable to some sub-Saharan Africa countries.
The university of Lutsk:
The following photos are the main train station in the city of Uzhhorod(looks more like a museum to me).
A swimming pool (off-season) and its fitness facility
New apartments in Uzhhorod for sale.
Now photos of some villages:
My hotel and its garden(I paid 100 EUR for 6 nights!!!):
So what do you think? Is Ukraine really that poor?
This is great! Did you have the opportunity to talk to people at all?
Sure I did. I speak some Ukrainian. What's your point?
I would be really curious to hear about your conversations with people. I'm a sociologist... All I do is talk to people. Your argument that Ukraine's economy is fine would be much more convincing if you included some stories about people you talked to and what their lives are like. Simply having pretty buildings does not mean that everything is perfect...
I spoke with locals and they complaint. They have very low salaries (and undervalued currency so in USD or EUR terms it is extremely low) and many of them are searching jobs in the EU or Russia. But the country did not look poor at all. It was clean and kind of in tact(horrible roads but the rest was just like in western Europe). I will write about it in my next post...
Great photos!
Thanks.