Introduction
I have spent the past six years living in Ukraine and to be honest with you, my experience has proved to be very, very different from what I expected it to be when I first arrived here in 2015. In this article I want to talk about the main pros and cons of living in Ukraine. That way you get a very good idea of what to expect. So, if you do decide to visit or to even live here, you’re not going to be met with various surprises.
The Pros
Freedom
The first pro of living in Ukraine is freedom. And for many of you, this may sound as a surprise because Ukraine is a former Soviet Union country and so you may be thinking what the Soviet Union has to do with Freedom. Well, allow me to explain.
Right now Ukraine is no longer part of Soviet Union, but an independent country in Eastern Europe. And so the rule of law is not as strong as in Western Europe or in America, and as a result you have a lot more leeway, and freedom of what you’re allowed to do. An example would be that you can park your car directly on the pedestrian sidewalk and you won’t have any problems.
The other thing is that you can say whatever you feel to anybody at any time, provided that you’re not using some aggressive words and you are not going to have any problems. This is radically different from the situation in America where everybody needs to be very politically correct.
No political correctness
The other main pro of living in Ukraine is that you have basically almost no political correctness. And in my opinion, this is a very big pro because political correctness can be used and is often used as a form of censorship.
In Ukraine I can pretty much meet anybody on the street. Somebody I don’t know and we can talk about very openly and deeply about any kind of subject. And so I can say things that would not affect a local resident in a way that somebody from New York City or the US would get. Easily offended about. In other words, in the United States, I have to carefully censor myself and that is not really the case in the Ukraine as of this moment.
As far as I’m concerned, this is a huge pro becauses it allows me to easily express myself without worrying about the feelings of the opposing party. That if I may say the wrong word, they might take it as a personal offense and then something bad might happen as a result.
That means things like Feminism, Social Justice Warriors are simply not really existent in Ukraine. You do hear about them from time to time, but in my opinion this is something you only read in the news, and they’re not really prevalent in the mainstream.
Low cost of living
The other big pro of living in Ukraine is the cost of living. Ukraine is a relatively low-cost country. The average monthly salary I have read somewhere is only about $300 now. That number varies depending on where in the country you are. So in a place like the capital, somebody could be making anywhere from 700 to $800, although I think the number is closer to $500, whereas if you go to some village in the middle of nowhere, the regular monthly income could be something like $100 a month.
Now typically when you have a country with low cost of living, you also have a low quality of living, but that is simply not true in Ukraine. In a city like Kiev, where you only need around $1000 to cover everything for a decent living, you can have a pretty good lifestyle that I would definitely not miss in my NYC lifestyle for that. Of course, I’m not saying You’re going to have access to the latest and greatest and everything like that. But in terms of comparing different lifestyles, I believe that the lifestyles you could have in Ukraine is extremely attractive. For the money that you’re paying for it.
Thus it is not any surprise that I have been living in Ukraine for the past five or six years and have been able to save more money as a result and allow the dollar the time. Learning to go a lot further than that would go in a place like New York or another big city in the Western world.
Traditional culture
The other main advantage of living in Ukraine is that you’re living in a traditional culture. Now for a lot of you, this may sound very weird, but whether you know this or not, the culture that you’re living under, whether you’re living in America or Western Europe, Scandinavia is a culture that’s more reminiscent of something “50/50” between sexes and is less traditional.
In fact, many of the cultures in the Western world are closer to matriarchy than patriarchy and so you don’t really have that 5050. And so you don’t really have that type of polarity where a man is a man. A woman is a woman, a man’s masculine. A woman is feminine and so many of you who have grown up in the last decade or so in the last 2030 years have no idea what even a traditional culture really is.
And so that is something you’re going to find in Ukraine, because here in Ukraine the women are very feminine. They’re very submissive, and the manner very masculine, and they’re typically tasked with making money while the woman is tasked with raising a family and typically staying at home and doing all the duties. As somebody who was born in Ukraine but grew up in the West, this is extremely refreshing because this is the type of culture I strongly connect with as opposed to the stuff that you’re living in in the West with feminism and other elements.
The Women
Last, but not least, I can’t finish the pros without mentioning the beautiful and feminine women that inhabit this great country. They’re simply like no other. ask anyone who’s living here or has visited here, and they’ll tell you what I mean.
I liked them so much, I actually dedicated an entire guide to them here.
the Cons
No rule of law
Now let’s take the time and talk about the main disadvantages over living in Ukraine. Because there certainly are some that exist. The first
The first disadvantage is there is very little rule of law. And what this means is that not only are the police going to be reluctant to help you out if you need help, but you know anytime you have an issue with somebody, you will have to sort it out with the other person. You cannot easily take them to court. The police are not going to be very willing to help. And things like that
Another element where this is a big problem is a lot of people are ripping other people off. And so it’s very easy to be ripped off whether you’re doing some kind of online shopping or in person. And if you’re not happy with the product or they plainly stole your money, you won’t be able to get this money back
One of my friends actually tried to purchase something online through a link. That was sent to him by somebody else from that online service, and so my friend didn’t realize that the link he was sent was actually a copy of the original website, and so the link was absolutely fake.
Everything was fake, but the credit card processor that basically accepted the payment was real, and so I immediately thought. If this happens to me, I can call my credit card company and they will take my money. Well, I do have a credit card company from A US Bank and they would be happy to help, but this is certainly not the case in Ukraine.
If your credit card company or you were paying using in Ukrainian bank because once that money leaves your account and is transferred to somebody else’s account, that money is pretty much gone. Regardless of which you may believe in terms of the paper trail and all of that, you simply do not have the same ability to. You simply don’t have the same amount of protection as you have in the West.
Crappy weather
Another thing about Ukraine that I’m getting progressively tired of is the crappy weather. Now I’m comfortable living in the country that has Four Seasons. It’s a cold winter. It’s a decent, nice spring, and it’s hot summer and then followed by chill autumn or fall, but what annoys me about Ukraine in general is that the summer is relatively short this year, for instance, it was relatively cold until about the beginning of June, and so you’re going to have maybe three to four months with decent weather, and then you are going to have again cooling. Temperature and again cold weather.
I’m not saying that I want to live somewhere in a tropical place where there is no snow or there is no temperature below 20 degrees Celsius. But what I’m saying is I would like for chiefly defined seasons and I suppose something that.
And I suppose something that even comes close to that would be a place like by the
And I suppose something that would even come close to that would be somewhere by the Mediterranean coast, whether it’s Spain or Italy, and so that’s one of the main elements that has been prompting my thinking. Whether it is time to make the move to a warmer type country?
People aren’t the friendliest in the world
The next thing I want to cover is something that is very stereotypical. Ann is known to foreigners and that is the fact that people aren’t the friendliest in the world
So what does this mean?
What it means is that when you are walking around, people are not going to be. Smiling at you or trying to help y’all going out of the way to help you out. I’m not saying that people are unhelpful, but what I’m saying is that people in general are not willing to go the extra mile as the case is in America, New York City, and other places where the people are extremely friendly. Even if you have those fake smiles and things like that
In fact, when I came to Ukraine, I was fairly comfortable with the fact that people are not as friendly because I view that as they are more real and authentic. But after living here for more than five years, I came to the realization that sometimes it’s nice for people to be a little bit more friendlier. Even though it’s absolutely fake, it just really lightens up your day and makes things a lot more sociable as opposed to people looking at you like you’re about to Rob them or you’re the enemy of the people
And so this is absolutely subjective and this will really depend on where you are, which are coming from, what are your values and experience, and so probably if you have been living in America for a long time, coming to Ukraine might seem like a godsend, because you’re going to experience some realness for the first time but. I assure you overtime you’re going to get tired and this kind of behavior is just going to wear you down to the point where you’re going to have the same thoughts as I am.
Conclusion: is Ukraine for you?
In conclusion, Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe is very different from what you’re used to, and so I wanted to really outline both the pros and the cons, as the case is with pretty much anything new or anything you’re trying to decide on or embark on so that you have a better picture. What you’re dealing with and I wanted to cut through the bullshit that a lot of bloggers are painting a very positive and sunny picture of the place. And that’s certainly not true.
And so I really hope you’ve gotten value from this article. And I wish you the best in your endeavors.