AHC: Have Ukraine become as successful as Poland by 2017

I agree that cutting economic ties with Russia is suicidal for Ukraine; indeed, this appears to have been one of the mistakes of Ukraine's post-Maidan government(s).

Also, though, in terms of territory, Ukraine is the successor of the Ukrainian SSR; however, all of the SSR leaders were essentially Moscow's puppets until at least the late 1980s.
Yes there was local management, but policy was largely set in Moscow for the Soviet SSRs.
Arguing about just how much autonomy the SSRs had or did not have is not something I can dedicated much time to at the moment. For those that only speak English, there is this interesting article which features Stanislav Shushkevich's account of events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR and how the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian republics would deal with one another.
The history of institutional bureaucracy and independence from Moscow was larger in Poland than Ukraine. Also not all of the Polish government fled, there was plenty of locals with institutional knowledge of governance that stayed and either joined the Home Army or were involved in the German administration on a local level and got coopted into the post-WW2 Communist government.
And I suppose you think the government of the Ukrainian SSRs wasn't made up of "locals".
Ukraine was relatively underdeveloped in a lot of areas and western businesses didn't want to work there due to the shitty governance.
By the time communism fell Ukraine was more developed than Poland. It's years of aforementioned "shitty governance" in Kiev that changed that.
Russian money is as good as anyone else's and trading with neighbors is great, but Russian money comes with Russian influenced in politics and the economy, which kept Ukraine out of NATO and the EU, which would have helped diversify them and help create less of a dependence on placating Russia.
Again, the idea that joining "NATO and the EU" is a prerequisite for being "successful" is ... rather dumb. Look at, say, Kazakhstan: a landlocked country with no hope of joining E.U. or N.A.T.O., small population, corruption and even more of a "geographical" dependants on Russia than any of the E. European states and is governed by a long-time dictator/"Moscow puppet". Yet it has a GDP PPP similar to that of Singapore, health investment from nations like China and South Korea & despite supposedly being a "Russian puppet" the Kazakh government offered the US basing rights in the country, has regularly criticised Russia and colonialism in Central Asia, refuses to recognise Crimea as Russian territory, trades with Europe & Ukraine, etc.
I have a question? What did Ukraine get in exchange for giving back the Russian Nukes? Could they have gotten economic assistance in exchange or am I not thinking things through?
They did:
By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid...
 
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CaliGuy

Banned
Arguing about just how much autonomy the SSRs had or did not have is not something I can dedicated much time to at the moment. For those that only speak English, there is this interesting article which features Stanislav Shushkevich's account of events leading up to the dissolution of the USSR and how the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian republics would deal with one another.

Thanks for this link! :)

And I suppose you think the government of the Ukrainian SSRs wasn't made up of "locals".

Yes--specifically locals who were Muscovite puppets.

By the time communism fell Ukraine was more developed than Poland. It's years of aforementioned "shitty governance" in Kiev that changed that.

That, and the elimination of trade links throughout the former Soviet space.

Again, the idea that joining "NATO and the EU" is a prerequisite for being "successful" is ... rather dumb. Look at, say, Kazakhstan: a landlocked country with no hope of joining E.U. or N.A.T.O., small population, corruption and even more of a "geographical" dependants on Russia than any of the E. European states and is governed by a long-time dictator/"Moscow puppet". Yet it has a GDP PPP similar to that of Singapore, health investment from nations like China and South Korea & despite supposedly being a "Russian puppet" the Kazakh government offered the US basing rights in the country, has regularly criticised Russia and colonialism in Central Asia, refuses to recognise Crimea as Russian territory, trades with Europe & Ukraine, etc.

Kazakhstan has a lot of oil and a good leader, though. :)

They did.

Yep--from the West; plus, they also got a promise (broken by Russia in 2014) to have their territorial integrity be upheld.
 
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