KIEV, February 14. /TASS/. Diplomatic relations between Russia and Ukraine were established 30 years ago, on February 14, 1992. The close cooperation between the two East European neighbors that used to be a single country has, over the past three last decades, shifted from vigorous interaction to a deep crisis.
Promising start
During the first two decades since 1992, Russia and Ukraine actively fostered their bilateral cooperation and interacted in a spirit of good-neighborliness. The sides established border and custom controls, divided the Black Sea Fleet, and set out military-technical cooperation. And in 1997, the parties signed the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
At that point, the two neighbors actively developed their trade and economic relations, which reached rather high figures in the 2000s. In 2004, their mutual trade volume was $18 billion that was more than double the 1999 figures. Meanwhile, the kinship of both nations has remained closely intertwined.
2014 coup and shift towards ‘anti-Russia’ policy
The 2014 coup in Ukraine, carried out with backing of the West - mainly Washington - led to a change of government and created a tectonic shift in Russian-Ukrainian relations. On February 23, Russia withdrew its ambassador Mikhail Zurabov from Kiev. After Crimea joined Russia, in a retaliatory move, Ukraine withdrew its own ambassador from Moscow.
The new Ukrainian authorities, under diktat from the West, abruptly changed their course towards Russia, accusing it of allegedly annexing Crimea and mythically intervening in the Donbass events. The new authorities labelled Russia as an "aggressor state" and embarked on an active anti-Russian policy at all levels.
Since then, Ukraine has been periodically slapping sanctions on Russian companies and people, and creating blacklists of Russian cultural figures. The teaching of Russian to schoolchildren in Ukraine is limited. Russian books and movies are prohibited and hundreds of streets and dozens of cities have been renamed in accordance with the de-communization policy.
Kiev also cut direct air and railway service with Russia. Ukraine has been shutting down opposition media - especially over the last two years - with authorities accusing them of "spreading Russia’s narratives," while Ukrainian politicians who advocate any restoration of ties with Russia face criminal prosecution.
Since 2014, Ukraine has been steadily pulling out of treaties within the CIS framework. As of April 1, 2019, the Verkhovna Rada froze the treaty of friendship with Russia.
Diplomatic relations remain
Despite Kiev’s blatantly anti-Russian policy, diplomatic relations between Russia and Ukraine remain at the level of charges d’affaires. The Russian Embassy in Kiev, as well as consulates general in Kharkov, Odessa and Lvov, continue to operate. Ukraine has an embassy in Moscow and consulates general in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Rostov-on-Don.
It is Kiev who states the inexpediency of breaking off diplomatic ties, despite calls from Ukrainian extremists. According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, "the time to sever diplomatic ties was in 2014, and now it would take something mega-catastrophic to return to this issue." He believes that there would be no benefit from cutting ties with Russia. Although the Foreign Ministry provides no specific arguments, it is known that there are several millions migrant workers from Ukraine in Russia.
Despite the obstacles set by Ukrainian nationalist circles, Russia remains one of Ukraine’s main partners: in 2021, the trade volume stood at $10.1 billion.
"This shows that, despite the crisis between the two countries, we remain vitally important to one another," says Ruslan Bortnik, Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Politics think tank. According to the commentator, Russian-Ukrainian relations are currently at their lowest point, but they have not been severed or destroyed.
"The main thing that the countries preserved is the huge potential for the restoration of ties," the expert believes. "Ukraine and Russia remain closely bound on security, culture and politics. Any negative or positive event impacting our countries will unavoidably reverberate to our neighbor. It’s like a communal apartment: the rooms appear to be separate, but the apartment is one."
The "single apartment" idea was also voiced by current Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
"We are neighbors and we live in this ‘apartment,’ and nobody is going to relocate," he admitted. However, he believes that the restoration of relations with Russia boils down to the issue of Crimea, noting that "there will be neither unity, nor any possibility for normal, frank and friendly communication."
Not without potential
"The Ukrainian-Russian relationship has taken a long journey, from the mutual decision on dissolving the Soviet Union, joint planning of the future and the establishment of the CIS, to the non-recognition and rejection of one another and each other’s national interests, which we see today," Bortnik noted.
According to the expert, these 30 years of history demonstrate the need for new relations, which would be "filled with economic meaning, a sense of security, common goals, interests and projects on post-Soviet soil."
He believes that 2014 became the starting point for the stage of development in bilateral cooperation.
"The 2014 situation shows that we need to rethink our relations - the old family relations with few written rules and many unwritten ones, which do not always work in the modern world. It is not enough to appeal to the past nowadays, we need a consensus model for the future," the political scientist believes, admitting that there is currently no such model, and this fact creates new crises.
Today, Russia remains open for Ukraine, and Moscow believes that it is up to Kiev to make the first step towards restoration of cooperation.
"Currently, Russian-Ukrainian ties are in a deep crisis," but this is not Moscow’s fault, and "Russia, as it has repeatedly been stated at various levels, is open for dialogue on restoring full-fledged ties," says Alexander Lukashik, Russia’s charge d’affaires in Ukraine.
"The ball is in Ukraine’s court," he underscored.