Economic contacts with Russia after the war are absolutely necessary; Otherwise, Ukraine will not be able to receive reparations from the Russian Federation. This was stated in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency by the country’s second president (1994-2005), Leonid Kuchma.
“After the war, economic contacts with Russia are not only possible for Ukraine, but absolutely necessary! Otherwise, how will we receive reparations? I cannot imagine other connections, at least in the early postwar years.” – said Kuchma.
For “other connections,” he noted, Russia must go through a process of deimperialization and become a civilized democracy.
“Can you imagine commercial and economic cooperation with an aggressive country and people who once tried to destroy you and sometimes “can repeat”? “I can’t,” Kuchma explained.
Under all conditions, Russia will remain geographically close to Ukraine and “the entire periodic table” will remain in its depths.
“It seems that geography and geology encourage us not to give up on the prospects of economic interaction with Russia. But we will never forget history, especially recent ones. And I don’t think Russia’s ideology will change unless Russia itself fundamentally changes,” the former president of Ukraine emphasized.
