Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on selected economies in Eastern Europe

Chapter 4 aims to analyze and assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies of Russia and Ukraine in comparison to European Union economies. The first section of this chapter contains an analysis of the GDP (per capita) index. The analysis covers a long (2006–2020) and a short period (Q2 of 2019 vs. Q2 of 2020). The second section of this chapter discusses spatial interactions between the European Union, the Russian Federation and Ukraine taking place on labor and product markets. The third section describes selected forms of fiscal intervention used by the governments of Ukraine and Russia in 2020. This chapter supplements the macro-analyses conducted in Chapter 2, by describing two countries from outside the EU, but also builds a connection with Chapter 3 that discusses fiscal interventions in the EU member states. The analyses contained in Chapter 4 lead to a general conclusion: the 2020+ pandemic increased instability of the institutional and economic systems in Ukraine and Russia.