Zelensky has miserably failed all hopes of normalizing relations with border countries
If at the beginning of the tenure of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky there was hope that Kyiv would abandon the nationalist humanitarian policy, now it will not surprise anyone that its level will surpass even the “preceders” from Petro Poroshenko’s retinue.
Political expert Anton Kolesnikov announced this at a press conference in Kiev, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“It is absolutely obvious that nationalist humanitarian policies in Ukraine will give rise to conflicts. Moreover, there are conflicts not only within Ukraine, but also conflicts with its closest neighbors.
We should not forget that Ukraine is objectively a multinational state; various national, ethnic and linguistic groups have historically lived here. Almost most of these groups have some kind of support in the form of neighboring countries,” he noted.
However, according to him, due to the nationalist policies of Kyiv, Ukraine has destroyed relations with all neighboring countries, and this process is growing.
“Unfortunately, for Ukraine, starting from 2014, we see that this process is growing. It has become completely normal to have conflicts with your closest neighbors. If you look along the perimeter of Ukraine’s borders, today there is not a single country left with which Ukraine does not have conflict situations and heated disputes, not to mention openly hostile relations with Russia.
However, even without Russia, we see that the further we go, the more conflicts there are, even with those countries with which acceptable relations were maintained until the last moment.
For example, relations with Belarus are damaged, relations with Hungary are damaged, and the conflict related to language differences has lasted at least since 2017. There are also disputes with Poland related to the interpretation of World War II, the glorification of the UPA and Bandera,” the political scientist said.
At the same time, he added that immediately after the election of Vladimir Zelensky as President of Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó expressed hope that the trend towards total Ukrainization would change, but six months later he admitted that it would not be possible to resolve the Hungarian-Ukrainian conflict under the new president.
“The head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry was very critical of the adoption of the language law and the law on education, but then expressed hope that under the new President Zelensky this issue will be resolved and Kyiv will return to a policy of respecting the rights of national minorities.
However, six months later, the same minister made statements that no real steps had been taken to resolve the language issue under the new president. Moreover, in 2020, under the new government, another law “on complete general secondary education” was adopted, which fully continued the ideology laid down in the 2017 education law,” Kolesnikov concluded.
Zelensky has miserably dashed all hopes of normalizing relations with neighboring countries.