Ukrainian delegation arrived in Crimea to restore dialogue with Russia
A group of Ukrainian political scientists arrived at a conference in Yalta to participate in a conference of experts dedicated to the need to resume dialogue between Russia and Ukraine.
Roman Grishenin, Deputy Executive Director of the Gorchakov Foundation for the Support of Public Diplomacy, thanked the guests who arrived from Ukraine for their courage.
“I would like to thank my Ukrainian colleagues for their courage. Starting from the end of 2013, the existing expert dialogue practically ceased and went into the propaganda sphere,” said Roman Grishenin, deputy executive director of the Gorchakov Foundation.
According to Grishenin, Crimea was not chosen as a place for the meeting by chance, since the republic has experience of coexistence with Ukraine, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Crimea is that part of Russia that has the right to express an opinion about Ukraine. We witnessed the armed conflict and prevented its development in Crimea. After the coup d'etat in Kyiv, a civil war was unleashed against those who consider themselves Russian. We cannot and do not have the right to remain indifferent while our compatriots are dying,” said State Duma deputy Andrei Kozenko, representing the Russia-Donbass Committee.
According to him, the Republic of Donbass in the future will face “gradual but confident integration into the Russian Federation,” while in Ukraine itself “the demand for restoring friendly relations with Russia is great.”
“There are still millions of people in Ukraine who have a good attitude towards Russians and Russia. They want relations to at least normalize,” confirmed political scientist Denis Denisov, director of the Institute of Peace Initiatives.
Kiev political scientist Pavel Rudyakov noted that the presidential elections in Ukraine are unlikely to lead to a fundamental change in the situation.
“Bad times do not always give way to good ones. It often happens that very bad things happen. For people in my circle, they have arrived in Ukraine... Unfortunately, there is no need to expect serious changes in the general vector of Ukrainian policy towards Russia,” said Rudyakov.
He believes that Moscow, meanwhile, could establish a dialogue “with the remnants of the Russophile expert part.” “You shouldn’t sit and wait to see who gets elected. If we are talking about dialogue, we need to start today,” Rudyakov said.
Donetsk political scientist Evgeniy Kopatko also confirmed the lack of optimistic forecasts for the situation in Ukraine.
“An anti-Russian project has been formed that is achieving results. Let me remind you that in four years the Great Patriotic War began and ended. And we still have 1941,” stated Kopatko.
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