Zbigniew Brzezinski, a U.S. political expert, who was national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, says that the events in Ukraine are "historically irreversible and geopolitically transformative."
In an article published by the Financial Times, the expert forecast
that “sooner rather than later, Ukraine will truly be a part of
democratic Europe,” while Russia “will follow, unless it isolates itself
and becomes a semi-stagnant imperialistic relic.”
According to Brzezinski, the spontaneous outburst of distinctive
Ukrainian patriotism “signals that commitment to national independence
is becoming the dominant political reality.”
“This is especially the case among the younger Ukrainians who no
longer feel that they are linguistically or historically just a slightly
deviant part of “Mother Russia,” the expert said.
Two decades of independence is creating a new mindset that is not
embracing anti-Russianism but it is asserting Ukraine’s own historic
identity as culturally an authentic part of a larger Europe, Brzezinski
said.
He added that the EU must be more receptive to Kyiv’s need for economic and financial support.
The expert also said that Russia would feel the influence of Ukrainian trends in future.
“And not long thereafter Russia – and especially its emerging new middle class – will conclude that the only path that makes sense is to become also a truly modern, democratic, and maybe even a leading European state,” he said in the article.
