KYIV (Ukraine), 02 June, 2009. — Round table “Ukraine&Russia: seeking the way from the crisis in relations” organized May 29, 2009, by Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Foundation OPEN UKRAINE, The Razumkov’s Centre and The Foundation “Russian Public and Political Centre” (RPPC), gathered Ukrainian and Russian experts to discuss current relations between Ukraine and Russia and to find possible ways of re-shaping the dialogue.

Most of Russian and Ukrainian experts, surveyed by The Razumkov Centre and RPPC consider relationships between two countries “unstable” (28,6% of Ukrainian experts and 33% of Russian experts) and “deterioratштп” (40% and 46% respectively). The survey also shows that the main reasons for worsening the relations between two countries are “intentions of Ukraine to join NATO”, “problems in gas relations”, “Russian Black Sea fleet on the territory of Ukraine”, “insufficient and ineffective dialog of the officials”, “delimitation in Azov-Kerch aquatory”, “insufficient use of civil channels of cooperation”.

Participants of the Round table agreed that negative rhetoric of the high rank politicians of both countries, absence of common successful projects, speculation on mutual history in political debate and negative messages in mass-media are crucial reasons for the downfall of  the relationships. 

Nevertheless, The Razumkov Centres’ survey shows that Ukrainian citizens are certain about reestablishing relations between Russia and Ukraine (only 4% consider that there is no way Ukraine and Russia can go along together). The main issues that may improve relations are “mutual history”, “family relations”, “mutual economical interests”, “mutual borders”.

Experts of both countries consider that their responsibility is to find possible ways in improving the relations and then present them to political leaders of both Ukraine and Russia. 

Analitycal report of The Razumkov Centre (Russian) about Ukraine&Russia relations  can be downloaded http://openukraine.org/doc/Moscow.rar  (5Mb)

Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Foundation OPEN UKRAINE supported the Round table within the INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE program  (http://openukraine.org/en/programs/dialogue/))

Web-page of Razumkov Centre http://www.uceps.org/
Web-page of The Foundation “Russian Public and Political Centre” http://www.rppc.ru/