09 june

Anatol Taranu: Moldova and Ukraine face an identity crisis

The societies in Moldova and Ukraine face a common crisis – the identity one. If the identity crisis in Moldova is more or less uniformly spread in society, in Ukraine it is profoundly geographically outlined. Ukraine, as Moldova, will be able to overcome all the current problems after the identity crisis is overcome, head of the Center for Political Analysis and Consultancy “Politicon” Anatol Taranu said in the debate “Moldovan-Ukrainian relations in new geopolitical and regional security conditions”, staged by IPN News Agency in partnership with Radio Moldova.

Anatol Taranu said that Ukraine will be unable to develop until it does not clearly answer the fundamental question: is it part of what the Kremlin names the ‘Russian world’ or does it belong to another related civilization, which has different principles yet? Without an answer to this question, it’s hard to understand the essence of the Ukrainian statehood.

The attitude to the past, especially the common Soviet past, is another problem faced by Ukraine and Moldova. “We now must decide whether we admit that we are the continuation of this past or it was a mutation of the normal development course. If this question is not answered, neither Moldova nor Ukraine will manage to decide their positions at civilization level,” stated Anatol Taranu.

He noted that the election of the new President of Ukraine Piotr Poroshenko by one round of voting shows that the majority in society is held by the powers that want stability and want the country to confirm its statehood. As to the prospects of remedying the situation in Ukraine, the expert considers that the country does not have the leverage needed to find solutions and thus needs international support.

Anatol Taranu underlined that an international model is needed for overcoming the situation and this model could be used by Moldova to settle the Transnistrian dispute.

The debate “Moldovan-Ukrainian relations in new geopolitical and regional security conditions” is the 31st of the series of debates “Development of political culture in public debates” that are organized by IPN in concert Radio Moldova and with the support of the German foundation Hanns Seidel.
click