Dear President-Elect Trump:
We have never heard of most of our national benefactors—men and women who sacrificed portions or all of their lives to build America. They are soldiers who lived or died in defending us. They are spouses who kept families together while their husbands or wives lived or killed in the field of battle. They are businesspersons who donated hard earned money to scholarship funds or university campuses. They are political figures, teachers, blue collar workers who all did something significant to preserve or build America. We recognize the most prominent. But most, we will never know. Their legacies, however, exist all around us in America’s institutions.
Chicago native Natalie Jaresko is such a benefactor. Sure, people will recognize her as Ukraine’s American born, Ukraine adopted, finance minister. But the most significant part of her legacy, most will never recognize.
Natalie Jaresko was a private American citizen living and working in Ukraine. In October 2014 Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko summoned Natalie, asking her opinion regarding the direction of Ukraine’s new government. With a bluntness that one acquires growing up in the Ukrainian district of Chicago, Natalie painted a bleak verbal picture for Poroshenko, including her assessment that he wasn’t doing enough to earn credibility among Ukrainian citizens.
To Poroshenko’s credit, he accepted her harsh assessment and determined that she was the woman to save Ukraine’s economy. In December 2014 Poroshenko bestowed Natalie with Ukrainian citizen and on the same day gave her the reins of its economy. At the time, Ukraine teetered on the precipice of extinction. Russia had conquered Southern Ukraine with its invasion of Crimea. It also controlled portions of Eastern Ukraine.
Time Magazine summarized Natalie Jaresko’s daunting mission this way: “The figures were dire. In 2014 industrial production declined by 21% and the hryvnia had lost 69% of its value against the dollar. The country had lost territory, resources, industries, people and markets. Between 40 and 60% of economic activity is in the gray economy. In the first quarter of 2015, the economy was 17.6% smaller than a year before. The war, which was costing between $5 and $7 million a day, was being fought with guns, but securing the home front meant saving the economy too. After 23 years of poor and often criminal management, making sure that the country did not implode under the weight of its debts and generalized corruption was a responsibility which fell, out of the blue, onto Natalie’s shoulders.”From December 2014 until April 2016 Natalie worked to save Ukraine’s economy. She reduced the public spending deficit from over 10% of GDP to just under 2.5% within two years. She restructured the external commercial debt, achieving a 20% write-down and a delay in principal repayments. She obtained $40 billion in financial support package from the international community.
She attracted $1 billion in funding for natural gas purchases, which enabled Ukraine for the first time in history to purchase natural gas from alternate sources than Russia. For more than a year now, Ukraine has not purchased Russian natural gas, breaking a critical Russian stranglehold.
Natalie stabilized the economy, turning it from -10% growth in 2015 to +1.5% growth in 2016. She stabilized the central bank reserves, building from an all-time low of $5 billion (less than one-month critical import) to over $15 billion. She stabilized the currency, which had been fluctuating daily from 20-40 UAH to the USD. She returned confidence to the markets and saved the country from financial collapse.
Natalie’s lasting effect on Ukraine is clear. But her unseen legacy far exceeds the boundaries of Ukraine. Imagine if Natalie had not saved Ukraine’s economy. A financial collapse in Ukraine was one of Putin’s objectives. Such a collapse likely would have resulted in much of Ukraine being subsumed by Putin’s Russia.
A Russian takeover of Ukraine would have bolstered Putin’s appetite to bring more and more territory under Russian influence. The map and future of Europe would have been much different without Natalie Jaresko.
Natalie’s $200 per month salary as finance minister doesn’t even begin to describe the nature of her sacrifice. Most will never realize the extent of her service to Ukraine, Europe, and America. It cannot be articulated in within the space of a letter. But those who truly know, know that it was immense.
The world will never know the enormous benefit Natalie Jaresko has been not just to Ukraine, but all of Europe. She accomplished it by caring more about her country than she did about herself.
It’s an example, and I hope you’ll follow.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
