‘Famine is part of Russia’s strategy’: Zelensky’s economic adviser on Putin’s tactics

Alexander Rodnyansky has a desk waiting for him back at Cambridge, where he’s currently on sabbatical from his role as a junior economics professor. But he won’t be returning for some time. He’s working from Kyiv, prioritising his other job: as economic adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky.

Rodnyansky was in Ukraine when the war broke out and he could easily have returned to the UK. ‘That wasn’t really much of a thought,’ he says. ‘I’m sixth-generation Kyiv. I was just going to stay.’ He became a full-time presidential adviser two years ago, hired to help reform Ukraine’s financial institutions, including the privatisation of state-owned commercial banks. ‘About 55 per cent of our banks are government-owned,’ he says. ‘That’s very unnatural for a market economy.’ Ukraine was hoping to modernise in a way post-Soviet Russia has failed to do.

Ukraine’s economy was expected to grow by around 3.5 per cent this year, he says.