KYIV, April 19 – The difficulty of carrying out reforms in Ukraine is due, in particular, to the actions of financial groups that privatized Ukrainian companies, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated.

"When Ukraine gained independence in the early 1990s, because the country is so attractive and rich, it was plundered not only from the outside, but also from the inside by many people who are now respected businessmen. I consider them just bandits, that is, they have become multimillionaires or billionaires on what was left of the Soviet era - enterprises. They did not build them, but simply took them away, "raided" them," Zelensky said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, the text of which is available on the website of the head of state.