Prime Minister: Challenges facing Ukraine have to unite the entire civilized world

The challenges facing Ukraine today have to unite the civilized world, because it is not just a question of implementation of reforms under conditions of the Russian barbaric aggression, but also of joint efforts aimed at countering military, economic and information aggression in order to restore respect for the international law and the protection of democratic values. This statement was issued by Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman during a meeting with Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres. The visit to Ukraine has become one of the first international visits of the newly elected UN Secretary-General, who assumed his duties in January this year.

Volodymyr Groysman stressed that the said meeting is taking place amid disrespect both for the international law and principles of respect for the democratic world shown by the Kremlin. «We realize that the Russian actions caused a huge threat for the peaceful civilians who live in the temporarily occupied territories, we see that the human rights situation in the occupied Crimea is of great concern, we have 1.7 million temporary displaced people. I hope that we will stand together and will return Russia to its internationally recognized borders and will stop Russia from using its weapons. We can not just close eyes on this problem», urged the Prime Minister.

The Head of Government underlined that there are no permanent solutions to this problem, nor is there any experience concerning the implementation of reforms in conditions of threats and aggression that Ukraine has been facing for the third year. However, in 2014 the country began to undergo transformations, in the face of military threats accumulated over years due to the institutional weakness, high levels of corruption, poor quality of justice and drastic economic decline by more than 16%. «But in three years we managed to withstand and to put into practice a series of key reforms. It is clear that a lot of work is ahead, but the direction is correct. My colleague, the former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, took on the burden of important transformations. We came in April 2016, and one of our first decisions was to set market prices for gas that has not been changed for 25 years and moreover, that was a source of a huge corruption. We undertook the civil service reform, because it is of critical importance to restore institutional capacity. We launched a new public procurement system. Our priority is to ensure sustainable economic growth, to conduct a large-scale privatization as well as to make changes in land, pension, health care and education systems», underscored Volodymyr Groysman.