Ukraine at 35: The Road Ahead and Its Relations with Moldova

If Ukraine manages to withstand the current and post-war challenges ahead, it will emerge in a fundamentally different configuration, with a different population, economy, and national-political identity. For Moldova, the key question is how to build its future alongside a new, traumatized and inevitably more hardened neighbor

Ukraine is marking the 35th anniversary of its independence. Under different circumstances, this would have been an excellent opportunity to take stock of the country’s progress in building its state, reflect on its achievements, and set new goals for the future. Unfortunately, the country is marking this anniversary amid profound uncertainty. It remains impossible to say with confidence what its actual territorial boundaries will be, how large its population will be, what will underpin its economy, and how its political system will change once martial law comes to an end. The milestone anniversary is therefore less a celebration for Kyiv than a symbolic dividing line between two historical eras. The Ukraine that emerged in 1991 has, for all practical purposes, already become a thing of the past, while the new Ukraine currently exists primarily in the form of a mobilized wartime state. Its final contours and socio-political character have yet to be determined, and there is no guarantee that this process will ultimately be successful. As is well known, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited a ready-made state framework, internationally recognized borders, an industrial base, transport and energy infrastructure, a bureaucratic apparatus, an army, a large population, and a favorable geographical position. However, the purely technical and administrative acquisition of independence did not, in itself, mean the formation of a unified political nation or a sustainable model of development. For more than two decades, the Ukrainian state was held together by a system of internal and external compromises between the western and southeastern regions, the Ukrainian and Russian languages, Soviet and nationalist interpretations of history, European integration and the preservation of ties with Russia. Kyiv desperately sought to combine cooperation with Moscow with closer ties to the West, while simultaneously balancing the interests of regional elites and financial-industrial groups. This arrangement made it possible to maintain a degree of relative political stability, but it did not eliminate the underlying contradictions. As a result, the state remained weak, oligarch-dominated and corrupt, while national identity became the subject of an ongoing and increasingly bitter domestic political struggle. The turning point came in 2014, following the loss of Crimea and the outbreak of the conflict in Donbas, which shattered the previous multi-vector model and set in motion irreversible processes both within and around the Ukrainian state. After February 2022, the dismantling of the old and familiar image of post-Soviet Ukraine accelerated to an unprecedented pace. Economic ties with Russia were severed, language and cultural policies were transformed, history underwent a radical reassessment, and the country’s foreign policy course became firmly anchored to the West. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has become not only a source of enormous destruction, but also a powerful accelerator of processes that had been building up for decades. On the one hand, it has definitively eliminated Ukraine as a buffer space between Russia and Europe/the West. On the other, shedding its previous dual orientation has not brought internal harmony, as one set of contradictions has simply been replaced by another, far more complex one. The clearest proof of Ukraine’s viability has been its very ability to withstand years of military pressure. The army, state apparatus, banking system, digital infrastructure, and international agency have survived. Yet the price of this resilience has been so high that a return to pre-war normality is becoming an increasingly unattainable goal with each passing year. Western assistance, of course, currently makes it possible to pay pensions and salaries, keep state institutions functioning, procure weapons, and repair infrastructure. However, such dependence also has a downside: the room for an independent economic and foreign policy is inevitably shrinking, while the conditions imposed by creditors and donors will influence the budget, privatization, access to resources, anticorruption reforms, and the country’s post-war settlement. After the conflict ends, Ukraine will almost inevitably become a more hard-line and militarized state, because the military, security services, and veteran community will wield far greater social and political influence than other socio-political groups. A significant share of the state budget will continue to be allocated to defense, while the long line of contact with Russia, regardless of its legal status, will remain a permanent source of threat. For Moldova, developments in the neighboring country have existential significance. Historically, Ukraine has been more than just a neighbor: it has been one of the factors shaping Moldova’s territory, economy, and political configuration. From 1924 to 1940, the Moldavian ASSR existed as part of the Ukrainian SSR, while during the post-war Soviet period, virtually all of Moldova’s major transport, industrial, and energy links ran through Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between the two states combined cooperation with mutual wariness. Although diplomatic relations were established in March 1992, and the two countries signed treaties on good-neighbourly relations and the state border, disputes over Palanca, the Odesa-Reni highway, property, border demarcation, and the use of the Dniester’s waters continued in subsequent years. Ukraine has always played a particularly important role in relation to the Transnistrian region. Kyiv was actively involved in the negotiation process as a mediator while simultaneously controlling the eastern route for Transnistria’s trade. Therefore, any changes in Ukraine’s position inevitably affected both the economic situation on the left bank of the Dniester and the overall dynamics of the settlement process. Today, Kyiv’s influence on Moldova remains significant and has taken the form of a structural dependency. Our country’s security depends on the situation at the front and in southern Ukraine. The state of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has a direct impact on Moldova’s power system, while the operation of hydroelectric facilities in the upper reaches of the Dniester affects Moldova’s water supply. This is compounded by transport, trade, migration, and the two countries’ shared path toward the European Union. Although Moldova’s authorities have effectively adopted Ukraine’s official understanding of regional security, according to which the neighboring state serves as a “shield” keeping the military threat at a distance from our borders, this arrangement increasingly ties Moldova to Ukraine’s political and military agenda. Against the backdrop of Kyiv’s complicated relations with Russia and Belarus, its historical disputes with Poland, energy disagreements with Slovakia, and conflicts with Hungary, Moldova remains one of Ukraine’s most accommodating neighbors, making a conscious effort not to display ambitions or defend its interests too assertively. The policy of our authorities is based on virtually complete solidarity with Kyiv and a willingness to follow Ukraine’s regional policy in its wake, even when it does not fully align with Moldova’s own interests. The most recent example is the situation surrounding the transit of Ukrainian agricultural products through Moldova at a 50% discount. The main threat is that our republic could become merely a passive object in the restructuring of Ukrainian statehood under highly unstable conditions. The fragile position of our eastern neighbor would mean new energy, migration, and economic shocks. If the conflict is frozen, a permanent militarized space could emerge next to us, inevitably affecting Ukraine’s neighbors. A separate risk concerns the Transnistrian region, as a weakened Ukraine focused primarily on its own internal affairs could lose the ability to actively influence the situation surrounding the future status of the left bank of the Dniester. Finally, Ukraine and Moldova are undergoing similar, albeit vastly different in scale, processes of national identity transformation. Like Kyiv, Chisinau is seeking to abandon the previous model of balancing between East and West, deepening its rapprochement with the EU as well as with the Romanian cultural, linguistic, historical, and political space. However, it is precisely the Ukrainian experience that should demonstrate to our elites how dangerous it is to turn language, history, religion, and geopolitical orientation into a zero-sum game, declaring one segment of society the sole bearer of the “correct” vision of the country’s statehood prospects. It is clear that Ukraine as it existed in 1991 will never return. If the Ukrainian state manages to withstand the current and subsequent post-war challenges, it will exist in a fundamentally different configuration, with a different population, economy, and national-political character. For Moldova, the key question is not only what kind of Ukraine will emerge from this historic rupture, but also how we ourselves will coexist alongside a new, traumatized, and inevitably more hardened neighbor.