Moscow: The Kremlin has warned Ukraine that if the country goes ahead with a planned agreement on free trade with the EU, it faces inevitable financial catastrophe and possibly the collapse of the state.
Russia is making a last-minute push to derail the integration agreement, which is due to be signed in late November. Instead, Moscow wants to lure its neighbour into its own alliance, a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, which critics have referred to as a reincarnation of the Soviet Union. Russia has made it clear that Ukraine has to choose between the two options and cannot sign both agreements.
At a discussion forum in the Black Sea resort of Yalta over the weekend, European politicians gathered to pepper Ukraine’s president and political elite with encouragement to cement the country’s turn away from Moscow and towards Brussels. At the same palace where in 1945 Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met and carved up Europe, there were angry exchanges between western politicians and the Kremlin’s point man on Ukraine.
Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s trade minister, gave Sergei Glazyev, adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin, a public dressing down in a discussion session during which the Kremlin man was faced with jeering and catcalls for demanding that Ukraine abandon the EU pact and turn to Russia. The minister said that it was the Kremlin’s heavy-handed tactics and threats of a trade war that had made European integration inevitable.
“For the first time in our history more than 50 percent of people support European integration, and less than 30 percent of the people support closer ties with Russia,” said Poroshenko. “Thank you very much for that Mr Glazyev.”
Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, accused Russia of a “19th century mode of operating towards neighbours”, and said that it is only when Ukraine is properly allied with Europe that Russia will begin to respect the country. “Poland’s relations with Russia are better now that we are a member of the EU and Nato,” said Sikorski. “When the question is open people feel entitled to exert pressure; when the question is closed they have to live with a sovereign country.”
Glazyev, speaking on the sidelines of the discussion, said the exact opposite is true: “Ukrainian authorities make a huge mistake if they think that the Russian reaction will become neutral in a few years from now. This will not happen.”
Instead, he said, signing the agreement will make the default of Ukraine inevitable and Moscow will not offer any helping hand. “Russia is the main creditor of Ukraine. Only with customs union with Russia can Ukraine balance its trade,” he said. Russia has already slapped import restrictions on certain Ukrainian products and Glazyev did not rule out further sanctions if the agreement is signed.
The Kremlin aide added that the political and social cost of EU integration could also be high, and allowed for the possibility of separatist movements springing up in the Russian-speaking east and South of Ukraine. He suggested that if Ukraine signed the agreement, Russia would consider the bilateral treaty that delineates the countries’ borders to be void.
The Guardian
