Editor’s Note: As Ukraine gets set to inaugurate its sixth president by May 30, the Kyiv Post is asking Ukrainians and those with Ukrainian ancestry who live abroad to send in their pictures (mug shots) with answers to the following three questions for publication. Please keep responses brief — no more than 200 words for each answer or 600 words in all. Include contact details for verification as well as full name, occupation and country of residence. A selection of respondents will be published periodically before Volodymyr Zelenskiy is sworn in as president. Send responses/photos with the subject header “Ukrainian Voices From Abroad” to Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner at [email protected]
Marianna Kozintseva is a founder of Turning Point Macro in London, United Kingdom. Born in Kyiv, Kozintseva is a global markets strategist focusing on policy risks, economic turning points and emerging trends. She used to head EEMEA Equity Strategy at Morgan Stanley, worked at Investment Management Department of the World Bank and served as defense policy analyst at RAND Corporation.
Kyiv Post: What do you hope for most from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy?
Marianna Kozintseva: Designing long-term solution to Ukraine’s territorial challenges. Ukraine must think outside the box to re-emerge strong from its current predicament. It would be difficult to win military confrontation with Russia and to ignite economic revival at the same time. Ukraine, therefore, needs to redefine the rules of the game. On the defense side, it could restructure its armed forces using U.S. Marine Corps or Israeli Defense Forces organizational principles, to ensure they are highly agile and can punch above their weight. This will make further encroachments on Ukraine’s territory expensive, in political, military and economic terms. Deterring future aggression is, however, not the same as regaining and reintegrating what is lost. To win back separate districts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and,eventually, Crimea, Ukraine needs to plan for peace. As an example, it could set up multilateral infrastructure investment bank, with North American, European and Asian, including Chinese, share capital. Such bank could, in turn, finance rebuilding infrastructure in both Donbas and the rest of Ukraine, with the emphasis on sustainability and energy efficiency. Infrastructure investments are highly thought after around the world and reintegrating is easier when economic prospects are bright.
Kyiv Post: What is the No. 1 priority facing Ukraine?
Full systemic overhaul. Recent 60-page World Bank report on Ukraine paints a pretty stark picture of the chokehold vested interests have on the country and anti-growth headwinds this creates. According to the report, small and medium-sized enterprises play a limited role in Ukraine’s economy, while large state owned enterprises and politically connected private firms dominate most sectors and receive regulatory protections and policy-based advantages, including favoritism in the public procurement process, preferential access to privatized state assets, favorable tax treatment, subsidized loans from state-owned banks, and state aid in the form of direct transfers from the budget, to name just a few. As a result, Ukraine ranked 83rd out of 140 countries on the 2017–18 Global Competitiveness Index, and its overall score (4.11 out of 7) has improved little over the past five years. If Ukraine is to prosper going forward, it needs to ensure level playing field for all businesses, no matter how small. To link to the issue of territorial challenges, Russia would have never dared to annex Crimea and to invade in support of Donbas separatists, if Ukraine was an economic powerhouse.
Kyiv Post: What is the biggest obstacle that the new president must overcome to achieve success?
There are two obstacles, of equal importance: legislative deadlock and personnel selection. In Ukraine, president has substantial limits to his powers and must engage in parliamentary coalition-building to achieve the desired results. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada is one of the least trusted institutions in the country. Next parliamentary elections are slated for Oct. 27, 2019. This means that in the interim, President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy will have to campaign for his party, Sluga Narodu, and simultaneously deal with the parliament dominated by the supporters of his political opponent, President Petro Poroshenko, which will likely attempt to subvert Zelenskiy’s initiatives. Even if Zelenskiy dissolves the parliament and calls for a snap election, the challenge of parliamentary professionalism will remain. To improve the quality of MPs, groundwork will need to be laid for creation of values-based rather than personalities-led parties. Such initiative will require involvement of not only Zelenskiy, but of Ukraine’s civil society at large.
