Another crisis! There was bread and groceries, now there's petrolE This means that soon everything will get more expensive: the bus, mTaso,and medicines. And what will happen with bread, how will they harvest crops at such prices?! how sick and tired I am of all thisE Fuel prices in Ukraine rose by 40 percent \n10 years ago people were interested in watching ambitious reformers. Today - they are scared. Scared by the cynicism with which the government rummages through people's pockets. After all, this is happening to the fanfare of propaganda about the UnequaledF economic growth. Some UanalystsF even claim that Yanukovych invented the Ukrainian economic miracle. Obviously, the first sign of such a UmiracleF was the grain crisis, as a result of which the government effectively ruined domestic agricultural producers. Then there were schemes with the illegal understating of the minimum wage, the introduction of taxes on medicines, books, diapers, the pensions scam... It is even difficult to list all the components of the UmiracleF. \nThe latest UachievementF of Viktor Yanukovych's government was the petrol crisis. Within a few days, fuel prices in Ukraine rose by 40 percent. And this is not the limit, because the high cost of fuel will inevitably soon cause an increase in prices for food and other groups of goods, since the costs of energy resources needed for the production and transportation of products will grow. In just 2-3 weeks, public transport may become more expensive, and later - utility costs. \nThe authorities in this case, as indeed always, are trying to wash their hands of it: supposedly, the global oil crisis is to blame for everything. However, such excuses are not entirely sincere. Indeed, over the past month, oil on the world market has risen somewhat in price. For example, in Russia petrol prices rose by 5%, in Kazakhstan C by 7%, Belarus C by 10%. So why in Ukraine is the price increase 4-8 times greater than in other states of the SES, C the Common Economic Space, where the government and the president have almost driven Ukraine under the accompaniment of talk about cheap energy resources... This is a rhetorical question, since the SES is not an economic entity of equal participants by definition. The founding documents of the SES clearly state that votes in its regulatory body will be distributed according to the economic potential of the participating countries. In other words, Russia automatically receives over 80% of the votes. It is clear that in this situation the problems of friend-partners will not particularly trouble the "first fiddle" of the SES. We already have confirmation of this today: in the SES no one lifted a finger to help with our petrol crisis. \n \n \nThe rise in price of diesel fuel will cause mass bankruptcies in the countryside \nThe rise in price of fuel hit not only citizens' pockets as a result of the general price increase. This is a painful blow to industry, because there has been a significant increase in the cost of production, and to agriculture. On the eve of field work, the countryside is being forced to buy diesel fuel at new prices, and this threatens mass bankruptcies of agricultural enterprises. \nMany experts are surprised by the actions that preceded the jump in petrol prices. In Ukraine, several oil refineries simultaneously began repairs. At the same time, the volumes of petroleum products exported from the country increased significantly. It looks as if the crisis was prepared artificially, and the government by its decisions not only did not hinder its initiators, but even assisted them. \nTwo versions of the petrol crisis look interesting. Of course, the government could have simply slept through it, failing to notice signs of a monopoly conspiracy in the market. If this is indeed so, then the incompetence of the Cabinet of Ministers is obvious, and this in turn is a weighty grounds for its resignation. \nHowever, it is not excluded that Yanukovych and company deliberately prepared for the price increase. After all, fuel traders, who got the opportunity to sell petrol brought in at old prices 40 percent more expensively and receive super-profits, would have to thank the "single candidate from the authorities" for the generous "gift". Elections are just around the corner, and no improvement in the country's life is observed. So all hope rests only on the "golden rain" with which the government is supposed to make citizens happy in the last month or two before the elections. That is precisely what the petrol hryvnias would be needed for. \n \nThere would have been no crisis if the government had launched the "Odesa-Brody" oil pipeline \n In favor of the second version is the fact that the government did not take several obvious steps that could have made the rise in fuel prices impossible or at least reduced the scale of the crisis. For example, the Cabinet of Ministers still has not managed to load the "Odesa-Brody" oil pipeline with oil, which could pump Caspian oil. Alternative routes for supplying energy resources would obviously have allowed avoiding such a sharp rise in fuel prices, which occurred precisely because of the monopoly conspiracy of Russian oil companies with the domestic authorities. It is also hard to understand why the government handed over to commercial structures the management of the strategically important state enterprise "Ukrnafta", which extracts 4 million tons of domestic oil, which should be a restraining factor. \nViktor Yushchenko believes that the petrol crisis has the same roots as last year's grain crisis. "This is C a problem of the same order. The situation on the fuel market has shown that the authorities do not control the petroleum products market. A small shock caused a collapse in prices. Therefore, in this sector there is no effective state policy aimed at restraining and preventing such situations. However, in Ukraine such a policy is absent, which is why prices jump," C stressed Yushchenko. \nAfter all, regulating prices on the petroleum products market is the direct duty of the government. The Cabinet of Ministers failed to keep its price policy under control, and in principle it does not matter for what reason: because of incompetence or because of criminal intent. The main thing is that as a result of the government's actions, millions of Ukrainians have again suffered. And this happened, by the way, not because of the mythical mischief of representatives of certain nationalities, but thanks to the actions of the native government. In the end, it is precisely the presence of a government that regularly worsens people's lives that may be the main sign of the so-called Ukrainian economic miracle. \n