Within the framework of the YouTube project Experts Club, the Macroeconomic Review column has been launched on a monthly basis. In the December issue, the founder of the project, Ph.D. in Economics Maksim Urakin analyzed the main macroeconomic indicators of Ukraine; the video contains diagrams and illustrations dedicated to the current statistics of Ukraine.
Thus, according to the State Statistics Service, the population of Ukraine for incomplete 2021 decreased by more than a quarter of a million people.
In foreign trade, China confidently ranks first among the trading partners of Ukraine, while India was in the first position among the countries in terms of trade surplus.
In addition, up-to-date data were studied, statistics from the state employment center were presented and the ratio of unemployed to vacancies was derived. The industries with the highest unemployment rates as of November 1, 2021, as well as the indicators of the average monthly wage in the regions were analyzed.
Also, the analytical video presents the TOP-20 countries of Ukraine’s trading partners in terms of foreign trade turnover in January-September 2021.
To see a full video on the Experts Club YouTube channel, follow the link:
The premiere of the first program devoted to summing up the results of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence in the economic and social spheres took place on the Experts Club Youtube channel.
In the pilot issue devoted to the demographic situation in our country, the founder of the Experts Club, PhD in Economics Maksim Urakin and the leading researcher at the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, PhD in Economics Lidiya Tkachenko, analyzed the main trends in changes in the population of Ukraine over the past 30 years, studied the historical data and UN forecasts for the next century.
The guest of the program noted that Ukraine has one of the worst demographic indicators in the post-Soviet space. According to her, this is primarily due to a sharp decline in the birth rate in the second half of the 1990s, early 2000s.
“Since Soviet times, one of the biggest problems of increasing the birth rate has been mass abortions, which have actually become a tool for regulating the population. At the same time, the birth rate until 1990 remained relatively high – on average 2-3 children per family on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR,” the expert noted.
She also added that today the birth of a child in a Ukrainian family is a “heroic act” due to the difficult socio-economic situation, so a surge in the birth rate cannot be expected in the coming decades.
Tkachenko stressed that since the 1960s, there has been practically no positive dynamics in life expectancy in Ukraine. The average age of both men and women in our country is now about the same as it was 60 years ago, despite a significant global progress in the field of medicine and health care.
“This situation is typical for both the late USSR and the post-Soviet period. At the same time, the countries of both Western and Eastern Europe, even those that were part of the socialist camp, showed much more positive dynamics,” the scientist added.
For more details on the analysis of the demographic situation in Ukraine, see the video posted on the Experts Club channel:
You can subscribe to the Experts Club channel here.
DEMOGRAPHY, EXPERTS CLUB, LIDIYA TKACHENKO, POPULATION, URAKIN, ВІДЕО
The Afghan authorities till the last did not believe in the withdrawal of the U.S. army from the country and considered all movements of American troops over the past six months to be military maneuvers, Mohammad Farajallah, an expert on the Near and Middle East, the editor-in-chief of the Ukraine in Arabic online portal, told the Experts Club YouTube channel.
“For some unknown reason, the Afghan leadership decided to reshuffle personnel in the army and appointed a person who had been undergoing long-term treatment in the UAE as the Minister of Defense,” the expert added.
Farajallah believes that due to these factors, the Afghan armed forces were in a deplorable state by the beginning of the large-scale offensive by the Taliban. In addition, according to the expert, the Afghan army is used to fighting according to the American model, and was not ready for the lack of massive air support and satellite intelligence.
“At the end of April, the U.S. military ceased serving Afghan aircraft and transmitting intelligence. They announced that they were beginning to withdraw their troops. The Afghan authorities, in turn, did not prepare (for the Taliban’s offensive) and did not understand the importance of the situation. Also, this situation damages the reputation of the CIA, which in its forecasts gave the Taliban at least six months to seize power,” the orientalist emphasized.
Another wrong decision of the Afghan authorities, according to the expert, was the concentration of military units in large cities. This led to the formation of a kind of besieged garrisons without supply lines, which rather quickly surrendered to the Taliban one after another.
The expert said the main factor behind the quick victory for the Taliban was the low morale of the Afghan army. The few pockets of resistance were brutally suppressed by the Taliban, but most of the army simply laid down their arms.
“The Taliban have worked with the heads of clans who have a huge impact on the local population, including soldiers of the Afghan army. When a tribal elder tells a local soldier to drop his weapon and go home, he has no choice but to obey, as tribal leaders have much more authority than inexperienced army commanders,” he noted.
Watch the first part of the program on the situation in Afghanistan here
You can subscribe to the Experts Club channel here.
The Macroeconomic Review section has been launched on a monthly basis within the framework of the Experts Club. In the first video, the co-founder of the project, PhD in Economics, Maksim Urakin, analyzed the main macro indicators.
“The goal of our Macroeconomic Review project is to provide the viewer with the key statistics and information in the most convenient form, to do it succinctly and clearly, replacing cumbersome tables and lengthy reasoning with graphic analysis,” research organizer Maksim Urakin said.
In the block on the population of Ukraine, the latest data of the State Statistics Service on the number of residents of our country were presented, a comparison was made between the statistics of state bodies and the indicators of the so-called “electronic census” of January 2020. In addition, the latest data on unemployment and wages in the regions were studied.
In the economic block, the indicators of GDP, the volume of foreign trade, the main trade partners of Ukraine, the national debt, the indicators and sources of investment and industrial production are analyzed.
All data is presented in the form of graphs and diagrams that complement the visual backdrop.
In the future, the Experts Club will analyze and present both the current statistics of Ukraine and compare the latest data with the previous periods, as well as with the indicators of other countries.
In addition, a series of thematic programs are planned, which will be devoted to the state of various sectors of the Ukrainian economy and their characteristics over the period of 30 years of independence.
The full video can be found on the Experts Club YouTube channel at the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCKGn3uGR_Y
You can subscribe to the Experts Club channel here.
On July 15, the Presszvanie project, with the support of the Experts Club, held another webinar for journalists entitled “How Figures and Facts Lie to Us, and What to Do with This.”
Oleksandr Kramarenko, the editor-in-chief of the Dengi and Korrespondent magazines, spoke about how to correctly operate with figures and facts within the framework of data journalism, how to adequately use critical thinking and data presentation techniques.
The webinar video is available at
According to political scientist Daniil Bogatyriov, in recent weeks, international relations are characterized by an escalation in confrontation between various centers of power.
According to the expert in international affairs, the beginning of not one, but two cold wars is characteristic of the current geopolitical situation in the world: between Russia and the United States in Eastern Europe and between China and the United States in Southeast Asia.
“For example, a recent meeting of the representatives of the U.S. Department State and the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Alaska only exacerbated contradictions between the countries. At the end of the meeting, unambiguous confrontational statements were made. The American side expressed to the Chinese one claims about the violation of human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the increasing pressure in Taiwan. The Chinese, in turn, pointed to the facts of human rights violations in the United States during the suppression of the BLM protest movement,” Bogatyriov said.
According to the political scientist, a similar level of confrontation has also been achieved between the United States and the Russian Federation.
“Today we see attempts to eliminate internal opposition in Russia and Belarus. Thus, the Russian authorities have launched a process to recognize the structure of Alexei Navalny (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) an extremist organization. It is no coincidence that the so-called conspiracy of the opposition intelligentsia has been uncovered in Belarus just now,” the expert said.
He noted that all these processes in the future may lead to the formation of the phenomenon of “large spaces” in various regions of the world, which will in fact be zones of direct influence of one or another large state.
“We are entering the world of “large spaces,” the world of zones of influence, where a cold war will flare up between them and in the future serious restrictions on the movement of citizens and any other cross-border activities are not ruled out. Such things will be possible only within the framework of their large space, that is, this will lead to the lowering of the very real “iron curtain,” as it was in the last cold war,” Bogatyriov summed up.
You can watch the full video on the Experts’ Club YouTube channel.
You can subscribe to the Experts’ Club channel here
