Bohdan Sokolovskyi
Recently, the whole world has been closely watching the movement of the test transport from Ukraine to China. This transport is not entering Russia, which prohibit the transit of Ukrainian goods through its territory. Now almost all watching are interested in the success of this transport, but the Russian Federation.
In fact, this route is first of all a political event, and only in general terms it may resemble the once existing “Silk Road”. Because, the economically justified route of it, whether one likes to admit it or not, does go through Russia. However, the Russian Federation's aggressive behavior and unpredictability of its actions do not give it a reason to be considered a reliable transit country. Besides, it is obvious that neither the world nor the young and conscientious current Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Andriy Pyvovarskyi and his team still have not realized to the full all the positive significance of this event, both for Ukraine and for the world community, and its bench-mark role in the development of all the countries of Eurasia.
At the beginning of the practical implementation of this project, we can't help mentioning its Ukrainian initiators. For the first time in the modern history of Ukraine, the idea of developing a transport route bypassing Russia, emerged in 1997, in the course of preparation for the International Transport Conference in Helsinki, in particular, in the conversation of the then Acting Minister of Transport of Ukraine Leonid Kostyuchenko and Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Borys Hudyma (curator of the economic bloc of the Ministry). They asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine H. Udovenko to discuss the idea at the level of the state leadership and the government. We know nothing about the results of the discussion, but at the Conference in Helsinki this idea, unfortunately, was not voiced, and, of course, it has not been implemented. We returned to it only now.
Perhaps if then, in 1997, the Ukrainian statesmen had been heard, and if this idea had been voiced and implemented properly, there would not be this Russia's blackmailing or its restrictions on transit now. As the saying goes, only the timeliness of proposals and perseverance in achieving it provide a positive result. And nothing else!
