In what was a first for both countries, the governments of Romania and Ukraine held a joint session in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The one-day visit by the Romanian delegation headed by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to the neighboring Ukraine, invaded by the Russian troops, has occasioned the signing of a memorandum on strengthening cooperation and ensuring the safe transit of the Ukrainian products towards the world markets. This also includes an appendix for the strategy of developing the road infrastructure and the border checkpoints between the two countries. The European Commission has promptly hailed the agreement in Kyiv, which confirms the consistent support Romania gives to Ukraine in order for the latter to export its farm and industry products, a major source for war expenses.

„Romania has a pivotal role in the functioning of the Solidarity Lanes and is engaging constructively with all the parties concerned, including through the EU-Ukraine Solidarity Lanes Joint Coordination Platform. The Commission encourages such close cooperation between the EU Member States and Ukraine”, a communiqué of the EU Executive says.

During the meeting between Marcel Ciolacu and Denis Shmyhal an agreement has been signed for the construction of a road bridge over the Tisa River as well as a series of documents on cooperation in the fields of defence and pharmaceutics industry. In Kyiv, the Romanian Prime Minister has been received by the head of state Volodymyr Zelensky and held talks with Parliament chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk

Ciolacu has reminded the hosts that in order to join the EU, Ukraine must comply with clear principles including the rights of minorities. Over 400 thousand ethnic Romanians are living in the neighboring country mostly in northern Bukovina, the north and south of Bessarabia and the Hertza Land, all Romanian territories annexed through an ultimatum by the Stalinist Soviet Union back in 1941 and inherited by Ukraine as a successor state in 1991.

After the invasion, numerous ethnic Romanians have gone to fight for Ukraine in the war against Russia.

The good news with which Ciolacu came back was that the authorities there no longer recognize the so-called Moldovan language, under which Romanians used to be discriminated against. Rejected by all the linguists, the concept of the Moldovan language was coined in the first years of the Bolshevik regime out of a purely ideological reason: the creation of a false ethnic identity, which should legitimize Moscow’s imperialist tendencies. Even the last head of the political police KGB in the Republic, General Tudor Botnaru, admitted more than three decades ago, that „everything had been made to diminish the love for a literary Romanian language in order to promote primitive Moldovan principles.”

(Bogdan Matei, Radio Romania International)