Ukraine needs a new economic system but not just a bailout program that would impoverish people rather than help them, former US Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul told RT.

“If you just bail them out, like we just bailed out all our rich people during 2008-09, the system continues, but the poor get poorer and the middle class keeps shrinking,” he said on RT’s SophieCo show.

Ron Paul believes that the Ukrainian people need “freedom, and the concept of property rights,” - they also need to work hard, have an incentive system and get rid of central economic planning, and “they would recover.”

“I don’t think a penny is going to go to the people; they’re going to get a freeze in their wages, and they are going to have higher prices for their fuel and their taxes are going to go up. So there is no benefit,” Paul added.

He claims that the foreign aid packages never go to the people as that money is actually taken from them, which makes them even poorer.

“It’s taken from the poor and it’s given to the rich in another country, because there is always the rich in the different countries and that of course is what we have to change,” he said.

As regards various NGOs, “they get government money, and they are always in the business of influencing governments and different things around the world, radio broadcasting and different things.”

However Ron Paul doesn't believe that such a strategy has any use, it is much more important to influence other people by setting good examples.

“I have an ideal for a society which is free markets and personal liberty and limited government, and I think we should do it and set an example, and then others might want to say, ‘Hey, why is America doing so well,’ so I want to influence them, but not with force, not by invasions and guns and propaganda,” he told RT.

‘Sanctions are wrong in principle’

Talking about the Western sanctions against Russia and NATO’s ambition to include Ukraine, the ex-US Congressman highlights that it is damaging not only for the counties’ relations, but the ordinary people in the first place.

“It’s hard to say what’s going to happen, but any type of sanctions or retaliation is detrimental to both sides, and I often thought that if people understood what was going on, they would express objections to this kind of bickering back and forth…so I think, the people in the middle, if we’re talking about the average person, people who have jobs, they suffer the consequences – I think that’s very bad,” he said.

“The sanctions against Iran have been on air for a long time, and on Cuba – but the leaders never suffer. The people suffer, in both countries, so this is the reason I think that sanctions in principle are wrong,” Ron Paul added.

Paul believes that NATO expansion is a waste of money and it’s not “the rich that pay these bills.” What NATO is intending to do in regards to Ukraine is to make prices on energy and taxes go up, to freeze wages. It is promising 18 billion dollars to Ukraine while the US economy, the main contributor to the NATO and IMF budgets, is in a bad shape.

You can watch the full interview with Ron Paul on Monday’s edition of SophieCo.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.