Ukrainian researcher says Pak-Ukraine ties are strengthening

Olena Bordilovska speaks about Crimean annexation and ties with Pakistan

KARACHI: A Ukrainian teacher, foreign policy analyst and researcher who has written as many as 70 research articles, including on the Kashmir issue and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spoke at length about issues regarding her country at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs on Monday.

Olena Bordilovska, an associate professor at the Institute of International Relations of the Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, discussed her country and its ties with Pakistan and the world.

"Formerly we were the bread basket of the USSR but today we can feed the people with our agricultural produce and we see our ties growing with Pakistan," she said.



She said what had really hit her country hard was the Crimean annexation in 2014. Though they had given up their rights to the use of nuclear assets, the global powers did not abide by their promise to safeguard Ukrainian territory.

Bordilovska said Ukraine had warm relations with all its neighbouring countries but Russia’s supremacist attitude was troublesome for them. "For the past two years Ukraine has not been dependent on Russian gas. We are neighbours, but not partners."

In the recent annexation, she said Russia had occupied 12 per cent of Ukrainian territory and killed 10,000 of its citizens. She attributed these as, "sad stories which have resulted in conflict, leading to the deaths of 10,000 Ukrainian citizens from 2014 to 2017”.



On a positive note, she shared that many Pakistani students travelled to Ukraine to study medicine or engineering. About the Ukrainian youth, she noted, they hoped to be a part of the European Union someday.

"Though we said our final goodbye to communism 25 years ago and Ukraine is now a liberal democratic set-up where communism is prohibited, the older generation misses the socialist policies when they were offered free healthcare and education,” said Bordilovska. She pointed out that Ukraine was in a transition mode.