Breaking through distrust in relations between Romania and Ukraine

On 21 April 2016, Petro Poroshenko paid the first official visit by a President of Ukraine to Bucharest in nine years. He met his Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis, the country’s Prime Minister, the leaders of both chambers of parliament, and the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, among others. Although the visit resulted in declarations of closer cooperation rather than specific agreements, the thaw in bilateral relations observed over the last two years was confirmed. After decades of mutual friction, contacts at the highest political level have been intensified, and institutions for bilateral cooperation have been revived, including in the security sphere. This has been accompanied by declarations of willingness to deepen contacts in the economic, border, educational and cultural fields, as well as by gestures from both sides towards resolving sensitive issues.

The main cause for this change was the two sides’ concurrent perception of risks in the Black Sea region since Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Another impetus to this thaw was the change in the domestic political situation in both countries: the strongly pro-Western course of the new authorities in Kyiv, and Klaus Iohannis’s assumption of the Romanian presidency in December 2014. Although there was still a catalogue of unresolved issues, a long-time barrier of distrust has been broken through, which paved the way for the development of Ukrainian-Romanian cooperation.