Ukrainian CEOs prepare to fight as businesses suffer from war talk

With the Russian invasion looming large, some bigwigs from Ukraine's business community are preparing to run to the frontlines and fight for their country should the war occur. 

According to American business magazine Fortune, Ukrainian executive Anatoliy Amelin has turned his home into an arms depot and is ready to go out on the battleground to fight the Russian forces if Moscow declares war against his country. 

“All my friends are ready to fight for our freedom and our country,” Anatoliy Amelin said while speaking to Fortune.

Amelin is the investment and strategy director for titanium company TitanEra, which is just 150 miles from the Russian border.

Although there is a lot of speculation, fuelled by the US government, that Russia will invade at any time, Amelin says that he along with other business people were prepared to face the Russian army, although he does not feel that war will come anytime soon. 

Amelin's rationale is simple— he thinks Putin cannot launch an effective assault against Ukraine, a country of 44 million, with 130,000 soldiers stationed outside its borders. 

“I calculated the amount of military force,” Amelin said. “He would need one million people, three or four times more than they have.”

Amelin took to his Facebook page to dilute the war hysteria in the country. Addressing fellow Ukrainians, he wrote that there are at least 400,o00 Ukrainians who have served in the country's military and are fully capable of fighting a well-trained rival army. 

Combining that number with 250,000 soldiers in the Ukrainian military, he said Putin would be a fool to think of achieving any desired results with the amount of men and firepower he has deployed on its borders.  

With all the war talk triggering region-wide anxiety, Ukrainian businesses have begun to face the heat, putting revenue and stocks in jeopardy. 

“We decided to pay annual bonuses early, so people have some cash,” Fortune quotes Andrey Gorokhov, CEO of UMG Investments, as saying. 

Gorokhov adds that reluctance has kicked in with foreign investors who are not sure about whether to put their money into a country that's on the brink of war. 

The rebound

But there is some optimism in the banking sector. Berenberg Bank chief economist Holger Schmieding has reassured investors of a secure future in Ukraine. 

Reminding people of Russia's weak economy, Schmieding said Moscow lacked the resources and ability to turn the European economy upside down by applying its military power on an ally like Ukraine. Instead, he said, Europe's economy would quickly "rebound" if ever another invasion occurred.

“When Russia moved against Ukraine in the first half of 2014, eurozone economic sentiment barely wobbled,” Schmieding wrote in a company note. 

But for Amelin, the titanium magnate, the war hysteria is not helping local businesses at all, as Ukrainian companies are now receiving "more complicated additions to contracts, which include guarantees and insurances," costing them a fortune.