Western stance on Ukraine: emotional and out of touch

CER's Ian Bond, director of foreign policy, talks to Ekaterina Kudashkina about the Ukraine Crisis (from 02:06).

"It will be up to the mission to take a look at what in fact is needed first, and then to help the Ukrainians plan the reforms that they might need. One of the main problems that Ukraine has faced for the last 20-something years has been weakness in the rule of law and the judicial system, for example, and also a rather low ability to collect taxes. This would at least in part explain why the Ukrainian economy is in a mess.

The Ukrainian economy has struggled with these issues for a very long time, but if you are not physically in control of part of your country, because it is being occupied, then it is extremely difficult to see how you have any chance of putting the economy back on a proper footing.

There are industries in Ukraine which have some possibility of being profitable a viable. And once you have a democratically elected president, which hopefully will happen after the elections on the 25th of May (if the people who are currently running around in eastern Ukraine allow those elections to happen), then I think you can start putting the economy back on its feet. And the EU support group will be there with a lot of technical experts to help the new Ukrainian Government to do that."