As the crisis in his country continued to heat up last November 2014, it was perhaps not surprising that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko would travel to neighboring Moldova to meet with its prime minister and in public remarks stress his vision of a “free, democratic, and prosperous future” for both states “in a wider European family.” Some were even surprised (as evidenced by the frequent choice of “Poroshenko Speaks Romanian” as a headline) that he was able to do so in the language of his host country—a language he learned growing up in the town of Bolhrad in southeastern Ukraine, a city once part of the interwar Romanian kingdom and one that today represents a key center of the multiethnic Budjak region on the southern Bessarabian steppe.
As the crisis in his country continued to heat up last November 2014, it was perhaps not surprising that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko would travel to neighboring Moldova to meet with its prime minister and in public remarks stress his vision of a “free, democratic, and prosperous future” for both states “in a wider European family.” Some were even surprised (as evidenced by the frequent choice of “Poroshenko Speaks Romanian” as a headline) that he was able to do so in the language of his host country—a language he learned growing up in the town of Bolhrad in southeastern Ukraine, a city once part of the interwar Romanian kingdom and one that today represents a key center of the multiethnic Budjak region on the southern Bessarabian steppe.
While Poroshenko’s linguistic facility in Romanian came as no surprise to more seasoned observers—after all, in May 2014, he took the opportunity during a campaign speech in Chernivtsi to argue in that language for the compatibility of diverse ethnic and religious communities with the idea of Ukrainian citizenship—recent developments in the region of his birth have proven to be much more unexpected.
Read more: Separatism and Hybrid Warfare in Southern Bessarabia