Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Roman Shkolin, Chairman of the Eurasian Discussion Club
Undoubtedly, Ukraine is a sovereign state. No one doubts this.
But many of our citizens, both in Russia and Ukraine, do not divide our people.
That is why for many of us the fate of Ukraine is very important.
We are in awe, and with all our heart we are worried about the future path of our sister republic of Ukraine.
Russia has for many years been quite passive and not actively engaged in promoting the CU, the popularization of the CU in the territory of Ukraine.
But lately more and more various public organizations and associations are turning to us to intensify work in the territory of Ukraine for the purpose of informing the public about what the advantages of the CU are, what the priorities are, even if we compare it to the agreement with the European Union, which Ukraine is planning to sign soon.
For example, one of the theses that our partners in Ukraine often use and emphasize is that on the territory of Ukraine there is active work to promote the European Union and European values.
There are lots of examples that our partners mention. For example, just recently a tender has been held for a grant among radio stations in Ukraine: they needed to discuss the issues of the LGBT movement in a positive context on radio air time for a certain amount of time.
These are European values which are artificially introduced and popularized in the minds of our brotherly people through such programs.
As for the prospects of development of Ukraine in the framework of the CU, it can be said that just recently at MGIMO a major conference on Russian-Ukrainian relations took place.
The representatives of almost all political vectors of Ukraine and of all political parties were present.
In general, we would like to stress once again that questions of such an historically important character as the country's integration into any alliances are certainly an issue that should be solved collectively by residents of a country.
For example, there is a European practice, which suggests that before joining the EU virtually every country hold a referendum on joining, and it is not the sole decision of the leadership of the country, because citizens' opinions were taken into account in the first place.
Actually, I urge the leadership of Ukraine to do this.