By Vestnik Kavkaza
Kharkov (Ukraine) is hosting a forum of the League of Experts of Post-Soviet Space (LEPSS) yesterday. The league was formed in Crimea in March 2013. Attendants of the forum will discuss demographic risks and integration on the first out of three days. The goal is to analyze and forecast developments in the former USSR territories in the next 5-7 years.
Attendants of the forum Post Soviet World 2020: risks, challenges, scenarios will discuss energy policy, demographic and language problems and succession of policy.
Ukrainian Minister for Education and Science Dmitry Tabachnik says that former USSR states need efficient integration mechanism and should not copy the ones in Western Europe. It is essential for one sixth of the world that used to be a single country over 20 years ago. The minister expressed hope that the forum will find practical mechanisms for integration. Experience shows that attempts to adapt using German legislature in Ukraine in 1991-1993 was not the best solution.
Yevgeny Kopatko, head of the Research & Branding Group, said that population was declining in Ukraine and will reach 30 million in 2030-2040. Pension reforms, new workplaces will improve the situation. Evaluation of population (45.5 million) does not meet calculations of experts (under 45 million). Ukraine had a population of over 50 million in the early 1990s.
Alexey Vlasov, director of the center for information and analysis of socio-political processes of the post-Soviet space at the MSU of Lomonosov, called the demographic situation in Russia and Ukraine catastrophic. He believes that status of the family needs major changes. The society needs clear values to be based on. The expert told RIA Novosti that donations to children and minimal solutions to housing problems of families will not improve the situation.
Constantine Simonov, director of the National Energy Security Foundation, says that energy can become the basis for integration.
The forum was organized by RIA Novosti and the Rossotrudnichestvo office in Ukraine. The charity fund of Dmitry Dobkin, brother of Kharkov Mayor Mikhail Dobkin, and the Superior Golf and SPA Resort sponsored the forum. It is expected that the League of Experts of the Post-Soviet Space will pull together political scientific, sociological, and economic expert elite of the post-Soviet states. Forums and conferences organized by the League will be practical and will provide interests of the countries-participants of the forum.
