You're reading: The Journal of Turkish Weekly: Kyiv at Political Crossroads

Kyiv is more and more insistently hinted that it is time to determine its priorities. Partners in the West and the East mean that Ukraine ought to make a choice after all. However, experts believe that Ukrainian authorities are not prepared yet to take only one side.  

Ukraine is expected to choose between the European Union and the Customs Union. It is impossible to enter both these alliances, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowsky said during his recent meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. His words became another link in the chain of similar statements recently made by European politicians. For example, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, speaking at the Yalta European Strategy conference, said that what matters is not that Kyiv is drawing closer to the Customs Union instead of the EU but that it is not moving in any direction. This is fraught with stagnation in the rapidly changing global economic situation. Meanwhile, during its independence years, Ukraine got used to the role of a state balancing on the brink of its neighbours’ interests, political scientist Alexander Segal says. 

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