KIEV, August 21 /TASS/. President Poroshenko’s words that Russians and Ukrainians are not fraternal peoples prove that the Kiev government has no plans to restore good relations with Russia, Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Policy Analysis and Management, told TASS on Friday.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied that Russians and Ukrainians had any fraternal bonds at his meeting with Ukraine’s public figures on Thursday, August 20.
"We have no fraternal peoples during the war. There is only one Ukrainian nation, which is heading for Europe, and there is the Russian nation which is in deep crisis," Bortnik quoted Poroshenko as saying.
"His words signal that Poroshenko and Ukraine under its current rule are unlikely to restore any relations with Russia to a level that had been possible before 2013," the Ukrainian expert went on to say.
Experts believe that cooperation between the two countries, including humanitarian and economic ties, will continue shrinking.
"We can see the overall trade exchanges dwindle further by one third over the past six months," Bortnik explained.
He did not rule out that with such rhetoric Ukraine could easily introduce visas for Russians. "Changes may also touch the social sphere: I cannot rule out that visas may appear. That will seriously aggravate family and social ties," Bortnik went on to say.
He explained that the main purpose of the information war in Ukraine was to create information mythologemes whose main aim is to impose a certain image of the past and a certain vision of the future on public mind.
"The danger consists in the fact that these mythologemes are like a freight train: it is very hard to speed it up but once it has built up speed, it is very hard to stop it even for a train driver," Bortnik explained.
"The crisis between the two peoples continues expanding," the expert said. He fears it is going to be hard to reverse the processes launched even if the power changes in Kiev and political agreements are reached. Even if the political situation radically changes to the positive, this "train" will continue moving in the direction of cutting social, cultural and economic ties for quite a long period of time," the analyst said.