VZCZCXRO7050
PP RUEHDBU RUEHSL
DE RUEHKV #0120/01 0251500
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 251500Z JAN 10
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9202
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 KYIV 000120 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/24/2020 
TAGS: PREL PBTS EWWT SENV NATO EU UP RO
SUBJECT: UKRAINE'S "OTHER" SECURITY THREAT - ROMANIA 
 
REF: A. 09 KYIV 437 
     ¶B. 09 USNATO 475 
 
Classified By: Ambassador John F. Tefft for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1.  (C) From the perspective of Kyiv, the Ukrainian-Romanian 
bilateral relationship is surprisingly troubled, with a wide 
range of irritants both great and small.  The most neuralgic 
issues for Ukrainians are linked to concerns about Romanian 
irredentism (e.g., issuance of Romanian passports to 
Ukrainian citizens).  Disputes over the Black Sea continental 
shelf and over navigation and the environment in the Danube 
Delta add further venom to the mix.  The cumulative weight of 
these issues has created a largely negative dynamic in the 
relationship from Ukraine's perspective.  One should not 
exaggerate the dangers, but Ukrainian-Romanian tensions do 
constitute one bit of unfinished business in the process of 
normalizing Ukraine's relations with her western neighbors. 
Much of the problem on the Ukrainian side is psychological 
and stems from Ukrainians' larger sense of political 
insecurity, particularly vis-a-vis Russia.  Time should 
ameliorate some of the tensions, and the election of a new 
Ukrainian president in February might present an opportunity 
to put the relationship on a better footing.  End summary. 
 
BUCHAREST THE THIRD ROME 
------------------------ 
 
¶2.  (U) "Many know about the idea of Moscow as the 'Third 
Rome,' often used in discussions about the nature of Russia's 
great power status.  Far fewer people in Ukraine know that on 
the other side of our country is another state with claims to 
be an heir of Rome.  ...Romania is our strong, determined 
competitor, single-mindedly working against our interests and 
taking advantage of our weakness in order to strengthen 
itself." -- Serhiy Tihipko, Ukrainian presidential candidate. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) "Unfortunately, after joining the EU and NATO 
Romania hasn't stopped pursuing its interest at the expense 
of Ukraine.  Moreover Bucharest is behaving even more 
aggressively." -- Ukrainian MFA non-paper. 
 
¶4.  (C) One of the great successes over the past two decades 
in promoting a Euro-Atlantic trajectory for Ukraine has been 
the establishment of generally positive relations between 
Ukraine and Poland, Slovakia and Hungary.  This process has 
included coming to terms with some heavy historical baggage, 
the creation of reasonably satisfactory conditions for ethnic 
minorities on either side of the borders, and the perception 
in Ukraine that Poland, Slovakia and Hungary are among 
Ukraine's strongest advocates within NATO and the EU. 
Bilateral problems no doubt persist, but they are largely off 
the radar screen and do not define the relationships. 
 
¶5.  (C) The situation with Romania and Ukraine is altogether 
different, with surprising numbers of Ukrainians from 
different parts of the political spectrum expressing distrust 
of Romania's intentions and policies toward Ukraine.  On the 
right, Ukrainian nationalists accuse Romania of harboring 
ill-concealed designs on Ukrainian territory.  From the 
political center, former Minister of Economics and 
presidential candidate Serhiy Tihipko tried to make Romania a 
campaign issue (happily, he got very little traction) by 
sounding the alarm about Bucharest's purported machinations 
against Ukraine.  When we went to discuss Romania with the 
MFA, it was telling that the Romania Desk handed us several 
off-the-shelf, English-language non-papers critical of 
Romania; the EU Commission office here received at least one 
of these non-papers in September 2009. 
 
THE BILL OF PARTICULARS 
----------------------- 
 
¶6.  (C) The laundry list of Ukrainian grievances against 
Romania spans a range of political and economic issues.  The 
most insidious problem is Ukrainian suspicion of Romanian 
irredentist sentiment, or even strategy, with regard to 
Chernivtsi Oblast and the southern portion of Odesa Oblast, 
areas that were taken from Romania by the Soviet Union in 
1940 and again in 1944.  Some thoughtful Ukrainian observers 
have told us that Romanian President Basescu had regrettably 
pandered to Romanian nationalism during his reelection 
campaign in 2009, including vis-a-vis Ukraine.  Some 
less-thoughtful observers here are inclined to take the 
irredentist sloganeering of Romanian fringe groups and 
extrapolate them into statements of Romanian intention, or 
even policy. 
 
¶7.  (C) In the same vein, Ukraine is irritated by the 
 
KYIV 00000120  002 OF 004 
 
 
Romanian decision several years ago to begin issuing Romanian 
passports to Ukrainian citizens in Chernivtsi and Odesa 
Oblasts who qualify based on their (or their forebears') 
Romanian citizenship prior to 1940.  On the most basic level, 
the Ukrainians are vexed because Ukraine simply does not 
recognize dual citizenship.  Moreover, as one EU diplomat 
here observed, Romania's practice creates an unhealthy 
precedent for Russia to justify issuing its passports in 
places like the Crimea -- which, as Abkhazia and South 
Ossetia demonstrated, could be the first step toward creeping 
annexation.  Finally, for those Ukrainians most mistrustful 
of Romania, the latter's passportization policy raises fears 
that Romania might be laying the groundwork for a little 
creeping annexation of its own.  The more paranoid 
interpretation is fed by the fact that no one seems to have 
any hard data about the number of passports Romania has 
issued to Ukrainian citizens.  Natalya Sirenko, the MFA's 
Romania desk officer, believed that the number is only in the 
high hundreds or low thousands, but we have heard speculation 
in the range of 60,000. 
 
¶8.  (C) A third issue is Ukrainian neuralgia about Romania's 
intentions toward Moldova.  Any move toward Moldova's 
absorption by/reunification with Romania would go down badly 
in Kyiv, where it would be seen, inter alia, as whetting 
Bucharest's appetite for related territorial claims against 
Ukraine.  Ukrainian presidential candidate Tihipko averred 
during his campaign that "the preservation of Moldova as an 
independent state is a strategic interest of Ukraine.  No one 
is more interested in this than we are."  (Note: It is no 
accident that Tihipko himself was born and raised in 
Moldova.)   It is probably not too much of a stretch to 
suggest that Ukrainians perceive an analogy between Romania's 
attitude toward Moldova, and Russia's attitude toward Ukraine. 
 
¶9.  (C) It is also noteworthy that Ukraine, in its treatment 
of its national minorities, maintains a strict distinction 
between ethnic "Romanians" (who use the Latin alphabet and 
generally live in former Austro-Hungarian districts of 
Ukraine) and "Moldovans" (who use the Cyrillic alphabet and 
mostly live in the Ukrainian portions of the former Tsarist 
Russian province of Bessarabia).  The MFA's Sirenko told us 
that the GOU rejects Romanian efforts to conflate these 
"different" groups or to exercise any droit de regard over 
ethnic "Moldovans" in Ukraine, to the apparent consternation 
of Bucharest. 
 
¶10.  (C) In February 2009, the UN International Court of 
Justice (ICJ) handed down a decision in a case brought by 
Bucharest about overlapping Romanian/Ukrainian claims to a 
section of the Black Sea continental shelf near Ukraine's 
Snake Island (ref A).  While the decision was ostensibly a 
compromise, it awarded most of the disputed shelf to Romania, 
and has generated a backlash here against alleged Ukrainian 
diplomatic incompetence and Romanian pefidy.  Many Ukrainians 
are convinced that the disputed shelf contains important 
deposits of hydrocarbons.  The area indisputably contains 
important deposits of national pride, and even rational 
Ukrainian interlocutors have complained to us that a) the GOU 
bungled the case, and b) the Romanians have gloated too 
publicly over the decision. 
 
¶11.  (C) The other principal economic aggravations involve 
navigation, dredging, and pollution in the Danube Delta, 
where each side claims that its interests are harmed by the 
economic activity of the other.  To illustrate how Romania 
will stop at nothing to damage Ukraine, one of our more 
tendentious interlocutors even alleged that Romanian activity 
in the lower Danube is designed to enhance erosion of 
Ukrainian territory and decrease the size of the country! 
 
¶12.  (C) Finally, there is a grab-bag of minor irritations. 
There are no direct flights between Ukraine and Romania. 
Ukrainians complain that ethnic Romanians in Ukraine have far 
more schools, broadcasting and publishing in their national 
language -- and more state financial support overall -- than 
the ethnic Ukrainian minority has in Romania.  The two 
governments blame one another for the fact that they have not 
signed an agreement to facilitate local cross-border 
movement.  The Romanians say they would need to open an 
additional consulate in Zakarpattya Oblast to handle the 
additional workload of processing related paperwork, and do 
not want to sign the agreement until they can implement it 
responsibly.  The Ukrainians do not seek any additional 
consulates of their own in Romania and insist on strict 
reciprocity in the numbers of diplomatic missions in each 
country.  They accuse Romania of holding up the agreement 
over the "unrelated" issue of new consulates.  In addition, 
there are lingering hard feelings over the cancellation of 
President Basescu's planned visit to Ukraine in February 
2009, and the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats the 
following month (ref A). 
 
KYIV 00000120  003 OF 004 
 
 
 
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS... 
------------------------- 
 
¶13.  (C) Romanian diplomats here insist that it remains in 
their country's fundamental national interest to lobby for 
Ukraine's membership in NATO and the EU.  Unfortunately, the 
cumulative weight of bilateral problems has led many 
Ukrainians to dismiss Romania's efforts, and even its 
utility, as a mentor for Ukraine in Euro-Atlantic 
organizations. Ukrainian Deputy FM Yeliseyev did not shy away 
from using NATO v~aXin NATO on Ukraine's behalf (based on the reporting the 
MFA receives from the Ukrainian mission at NATO), but 
believes Romania has leveraged its EU membership not to help 
Ukraine, but to advance its own economic interests vis-a-vis 
Ukraine. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶14.  (C) One should not exaggerate the degree of Ukrainian 
concern about Romania.  Former Deputy Minister of Defense 
Leonid Polyakov told us that there is no trust among 
Ukrainians toward Romania -- but no real fear either.  Even 
anti-Romanian gadfly Tihipko admitted that "this (Romanian 
activism contrary to Ukrainian interests) does not mean that 
the Romanians are enemies with whom we cannot cooperate." 
Nevertheless, Ukrainian-Romanian tensions constitute a piece 
of unfinished business in the process of reconciling Ukraine 
and her western neighbors, and serve as an actual or 
potential drag on Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. 
 
¶15.  (C) A large part of the problem on the Ukrainian side is 
psychological.  Ukrainians' short history of statehood and 
weak sense of national identity give them a greater sense of 
vulnerability in general -- even to a country half Ukraine's 
size.  As one analyst wrote in the Ukrainian weekly "Dzerkalo 
tyzhnia," "The problem lies in the fact that Kyiv projects 
onto relations with Romania its fears about the potential 
Russian threat to Ukraine's territorial integrity in the 
Crimea.  Ukraine's heightened sense of the security deficit 
in its relations with Russia ... makes it hypersensitive to 
other foreign-policy irritants as well."  In the context of 
this wider insecurity, lesser problems take on deeper 
significance, and suspicion hardens into conspiracy theory. 
Rather than viewing the ICJ case as a normal, civilized way 
to resolve a territorial dispute, Ukrainians perceive it as 
an underhanded Romanian ploy, with many Ukrainians convinced 
that Bucharest somehow pulled a few strings in Brussels in 
order to ensure a favorable outcome in The Hague.  One can 
understand Romania's denunciation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop 
Pact as a rejection of historic aggression against Romania, 
of secret treaties, or of great powers unilaterally deciding 
the fate of small nations.  In Ukraine, unfortunately, there 
is a tendency to view it as an implicit rejection of the 
current Romanian-Ukrainian borders, which were essentially 
established by that Pact. 
 
 
¶16.  (C) There is no easy, quick-fix solution to the problem 
of Ukrainian distrust toward Romania.  We can probably expect 
more unhelpful Ukrainian rhetoric like Yeliseyev's diatribe 
at NATO; at such times, basic damage-control will be the best 
we can manage.  Nevertheless, some irritants might be 
ameliorated by time.  Romania is not going to change its 
citizenship law or revoke the passports it has issued to 
Ukrainian citizens, but Ukrainian anxiety should recede as it 
becomes apparent that a) the number of such passports will be 
small; and b) Romania will not try to do in Bukovina what 
Russia has done in Abkhazia.  Time should also soothe 
Ukrainian ire and disappointment over the ICJ decision and 
events like last year's canceled presidential visit and 
diplomatic expulsions.  Finally, renewed high-level contacts 
between Romania and the new Ukrainian administration 
following Ukraine's February 7 presidential runoff election 
could present an opportunity to introduce a more positive 
dynamic into the relationship.  Asked whether there is any 
hope of a Romanian/Ukrainian "reset," Romanian Ambassador 
Hristea (protect) told us that his embassy has been in touch 
with the teams of both runoff candidates, Yanukovych and 
Tymoshenko.  Both camps had expressed some interest in 
improving bilateral relations, he said, but the real extent 
of that interest would only become clear once a new GOU is 
assembled.  Nothwithstanding his own "emotional preference" 
for the Ukrainian presidency, Hristea thought that a 
 
KYIV 00000120  004 OF 004 
 
 
Yanukovych victory presented the best prospect for 
Romanian-Ukrainian rapprochement. 
TEFFT