On June 28, Ukraine’s Constitution Day, another anniversary was marked in the calendar – 70 years of Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovyna, a date much less known to contemporary Ukrainians, but probably no less significant for the country´s history. As a result of the crooked policy of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the territory of Ukraine increased with the annexation of the Chernivtsi oblast and southern regions of Odesa oblast. Really, the significance of these historic events is difficult to exaggerate
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| PHÎÒÎ: AP |
What is most significant about this anniversary is that it could potentially lead to a new round of tensions in the complicated relations between Kyiv and Bucharest. There is no influential politicians in Romania at the moment that believe that Bessarabia and Bukovyna were taken over fairly and most importantly lost for good. The deeply rooted vengeance in the political consciousness of Romanians poses a major problem for normalization of dialogue between the two countries. As long as such sentiments prevail in Bucharest, Romania can be viewed as a powerful and dangerous rival for Ukraine.
Romania has for years opposed Ukrainian interests on a wide range of issues: from the development of the Black Sea shelf and the Danube channels to cultural, linguistic and political rights of ethnic Romanians in the Chernivtsi oblast and Transcarpathia.
The reason for the special relationship of Bucharest to Ukraine is simple enough: Romanian politicians that fight with one another no less fiercely than Ukraine and Romania are unanimous on the fact that their country is destined to be a leader in Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region. The existence of an independent Ukraine, hence, is simply a historical paradox, a state that "unfairly" inherited former Romanian lands from the Soviet Union. The Romanian state machine is working full steam ahead “to restore the historical justice”.
In the Chernivtsi oblast ethnic Romanians account for approximately 12% of the population. Bucharest spares no efforts to register local Moldovans as Romanians in order to reach the threshold of one fifth of the population, which in accordance with the European Charter of regional languages and languages of national minorities would provide Romanians official status in the region. For several years, Bucharest has been sponsoring the education of ethnic Romanians in the universities of their “lost homeland”.
After graduation the ardent supporters of the project Romania Mare (Great Romania) return to Ukraine. This issue got the point where on the eve of summer the workers Romanian Consulate General in Chernivtsi visited kindergartens, gathering groups to send children on holidays in Romania. For this, as for a variety of other openly subversive actions a few years ago, Ukraine had expelled a Romanian diplomat that worked in the region.
Parallel to this, using their newly acquired status as a member of the EU, Bucharest is illegally issuing Romanian passports to residents of the region, which are in great demand among Ukrainians as this opens their window of opportunity to the EU.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, together with the Interior Ministry and Security Service, is struggling with this practice, as fully discontinuing the certification of the residents of Bukovyna is not possible.
Meanwhile, in Romania this process is totally legitimised. At the end of last year, the Romanian parliament amended the Citizenship Law, which authorized the legal issuance of passports to all those who lived on the territory of Romania´s borders from 1917 to 1940 and their relatives up to the third generation.
The capacities of official Kyiv in this confrontation with Romania are limited due to the clear-cut position of the EU on this issue. EU officials and politicians of the leading member countries of the union feel no enthusiasm about the persistent attempts of Bucharest to involve them in this conflict with Ukraine, but at the same time are reluctant to put Romania in its place. Significant is the fact that during his visit to Ukraine, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Fule flatly refused to answer a question posed by Ukrainian journalists about why Brussels is not responding to requests to revise the demarcation of the Romanian border along the Danube River, though today it borders on the EU.
The new overt pro-Romanian policy line that Moldovan authorities are toeing dealt another blow to Ukraine. The story below is penultimate testimony to this fact. Following the signing of an agreement on the protection of minority rights on the territories of Ukraine and Romania by official Kyiv and Chisinau late last year, the Moldovan Ambassador to Bucharest was invited to the Foreign Ministry and reprimanded for a decision that was not coordinated with Moldova’s "elder brother". Noteworthy, is that in February the Moldovan delegation refused to sign another document only because the official language of Moldova was called Moldovan, as stated in its constitution, rather than Romanian, as the supporters of reunification with Romania insist.
Ukrainian diplomats resolutely refused to take such a step and finally it was written in the document that it was drafted in the national languages of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.
The statement by Vice Prime Minister of Moldova Viktor Osipov on the reintegration and the role of Romania in the Transdnistrian settlement was another nod in the direction of Bucharest. At a press conference in Chisinau on June 7, Osipov said that Romania will not enter into talks of the "5+2" format on the Transdnistrian issue as an independent member.
At the same time, he said that official Chisinau welcomes a more active role on the part of Romania in the Transdnistrian conflict as a full-fledged EU member. Specifically, this invitation is aimed at scrapping the format of a solution to this issue, because now the "5+2" format is interpreted as follows: Moldova and the Transdnistrian region are conflicting parties, Russia and Ukraine are the guarantor countries, the OSCE is the mediator and the EU and the U.S. are observers. Greater involvement of Romania, as seen in Chisinau, implies that the EU unfairly extends its authority.
The transformation of Chisinau into a satellite of Bucharest creates a major problem for Kyiv not only in the Transdnistrian issue, but also in the issue of the Romanian minority. It is extremely dangerous if the Moldovan authorities under the pressure of Bucharest begin to demand that ethnic Moldovans in Ukraine be registered as Romanians. This artificially shifts the ethnic balance in Bukovyna and Southern Bessarabia to the disadvantage of Ukraine.
General speaking, the main cause of failure in talks with Romania on the Moldovan issue was Ukraine’s internal political struggles and illusions of soon accession to NATO. Now, Ukraine is in no hurry to join NATO, but in the context of dialogue with the EU it has managed to agree that Romania will not put spokes in Ukraine’s wheels, neither on the issue of visa simplification, nor on the issue of Ukraine joining the EU. Be that as it may, the problem is that such spokes can appear at any time, especially taking into account that a presidential campaign will soon get under way in Romania.
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