Since Soviet times the Ukrainian economy was well integrated with the Russian one, so it will be a lengthy and challenging process for Ukraine to re-orient into the European market. However, there are several factors that will help smooth this transition.
It is also hard to say that the current confrontation between Russia and the West is fundamentally ideological, since Russia and the Western countries can develop in harmony and profit from mutually beneficial partnerships.
10 images 10 responses… Ukrainians and Russians are truly brother nations and if Russia does not pull Ukraine back into authoritarianism, then Ukraine will push Russia onto democratic transition path
The Berlin Wall fell twenty-five years ago, but today there is another confrontation line between the West and Russia that cuts Ukraine in two. The reconciliation circuit that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall will not be complete until all the countries in Eastern Europe are free to determine their own fates.
GUAM, is the only international organization in the post-Soviet space that has indicated Euro-Atlantic integration as one of its core principles. Today, the GUAM member states Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova constitute the four countries within the Eastern Partnership that have resisted Moscow’s pressures to join the Eurasian Custom’s Union.
The Russian government has cultivated a myth that President Vladimir Putin is a superhero, who needs to rescue Russia from an existential threat. The Kremlin’s neo-imperial political agenda thrives on the sense of an indignant national pride in Russia, which has developed in the aftermath of a series of challenging historic events that left the country with a more modest role in the international affairs than before. According to Putin’s current popularity ratings and public opinion polls, following Russian military intervention in Ukraine, so far, the Kremlin has been successful in marketing its apocalyptic saga. The main question is, how much longer will Russians buy into the myth of an existential threat?
Azerbaijan, the smallest country on the shores of the Caspian, has trod through a very challenging geostrategic environment during the last twenty years of independence and in the near future, the situation around Azerbaijan will become only more menacing.
Caspian Observer 