Despite the
present difficulties in relations between the two countries,
prospects for Russian-Ukrainian economic and cultural reintegration
remain strong. Economically, Ukraine depends heavily on Russian
energy supplies and on the export of its agricultural produce to
Russia. Most importantly, blood ties bind the two peoples not just
in a metaphoric but also in a direct sense: millions of Russian
speakers live in Ukraine, and millions of Ukrainians live in Russia;
many thousands of mixed Russian-Ukrainian families have become
artificially separated as a result of the breakup of the Soviet
Union.
The process of
reintegration between Russia and Ukraine, however, is hampered by
the legacy of the troubled Soviet past. It includes militant
nationalism, rife in Ukraine’s western provinces, and the problem of
the Crimean peninsula, ceded to Ukraine by Khrushchev on a whim, at
a time when the administrative borders between the republics of a
unitary empire did not matter. Crimea is vital to Russia as home to
its main Black Sea naval base of Sebastopol.
In 2004, the so-called "Orange Revolution"
brought to power pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko whose political
program included the goals of NATO and European Union memberships
for Ukraine.
