УКРАЇНСЬКІ КОРДОНИ: СУЧАСНИЙ СТАН І ПРОБЛЕМИ

Abstract

This article analyses Ukraine’s current borders, de jure and de facto, from a geopolitical point of view. Significant changes in the border regime occurred after the political events of 2014. The emergence of de facto borders after the annexation of Crimea and the hostilities in eastern Ukraine raises the question not only of the direction of the Ukrainian state’s foreign policy but also has fundamental consequences for domestic policy. The presence of international organisations monitoring parts of the state border shows that Ukraine is involved in the process of combating illegal immigration and smuggling, on the one hand, and that it has not solved all its state-building problems, on the other. The delimitation of state borders (demarcation) with the other former Soviet republics has taken a long time for land borders and has not been completed for maritime borders. Today’s Ukraine, in the context of European integration, opens its borders to the West and minimizes its contacts with the East. The sharp deterioration in relations with Russia following the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s support for separatist entities in eastern Ukraine has led to the abandonment of cross-border cooperation between border regions, including for mechanisms as effective as Euroregions. The need to amend current Ukrainian legislation, to take into account the political and legal status of de facto borders is an important point at the moment. To achieve this objective, it is necessary not only to draw on the experience of the functioning of the State border with Moldova in its section not controlled by the Moldovan government but also to develop new approaches to facilitate the lives of displaced persons, legalize their legal status and facilitate the crossing of the line of demarcation.