The Ukraine Conflict and Ethnic Romanians
In west Ukraine ethnic Romanians blocked several roads to protest a new partial military mobilization.
Roxana Vasile, 28.07.2014, 13:07
On Friday the Romanian Foreign Ministry issued a new warning concerning the armed conflict in east Ukraine, this time about a number of roads in the Cernauti region, near the Romanian border, which had been blocked. Sources from the region later explained that the locals in west Ukraine, mostly ethnic Romanians, had chosen this form of protest to express their discontent with Kiev’s decision to call a new partial military mobilization.
Hundreds of Romanian youth were called to arms, and their parents fear that they will be sent to fight against the pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. People from Cernauti have already lost their lives in the clashes, so outraged people burnt their incorporation orders in the streets. The locals blocked the roads and threatened they would not leave until the regional authorities cancel the orders issued after the Parliament of Ukraine approved a partial mobilization last week. The president of the “Mihai Eminescu” Romanian Cultural Association in Cernauti, Vasile Bacu, told Radio Romania:
Vasile Bacu: “A lot of men were invited to the Military Commissariat to establish reservist units that would receive military training. Those who took to the streets are mostly the parents and relatives of those who are already deployed to the east of the country, because bad news keeps coming from that region. Men from Cernauti were killed there as well. So everybody is afraid their men will be sent to war.”
“We need peace in Ukraine. We don’t need our kids going to war and dying,” says one of the protesters, quoted by Romanian mass media. Another one wonders why Romanian youth have to die in Donbas or Donetsk, whereas young people from eastern Ukraine came to their region as refugees.
Totaling around half a million people, the Romanian community in Ukraine lives mostly in the west of the country, in the former Romanian territories that were annexed by the former Soviet Union in 1940, and which in 1991 became part of Ukraine. This third-largest ethnic community in Ukraine, after the Ukrainians and Russians, the Romanian minority has no part in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
In Bucharest, the Foreign Ministry once again recommended caution as regards travels to Ukraine, and posted updated security information on the region on its homepage, at www.mae.ro.
