KIEV, Sept. 6 - President Petro Poroshenko said that the decline in citizens' living standards is the social cost of Russian aggression, though he noted that the country's authorities have done everything possible in order to smooth it.

"Falling standards of living, poverty, financial problems of the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, high social cost of the Russian aggression – are the things which are extremely difficult to bear. On the one hand, I do not know examples in history where the country's economy flourishes in conditions of hostilities. We have done everything we could to avoid a default, ensure macroeconomic stability and maintain a critical minimum of social guarantees," he said during his annual message to the Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday.