Mykola Tomenko, a member of the opposition Batkivschyna party's parliamentary faction, has demanded that President Viktor Yanukovych make public the text of a strategic agreement with Russia that he reportedly signed at negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Friday.
“This document needs at least to be publicized first, and therefore I have addressed the president with the demand that he present this text so that it can be examined. Second, it has yet to be understood whether the document has been signed in the form of an international treaty. And if this is so, it will have to be ratified by the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada,” Tomenko said at public hearings in Kaniv, the Cherkasy region, when asked to comment on reports that Yanukovych had signed a strategic agreement with Russia, which includes Ukraine’s obligation to join the Belarusian-Kazakh-Russian Customs Union.
Tomenko suggested that, if this document regulates the extension of some loans and the revision of the gas agreement, it is one story, but if it envisions Ukraine’s accession to the Customs Union in this form or another, which implies the delegation of certain sovereign powers to a supranational entity, “it is quite another story.”
“In any case, the matter implies the president’s violation of the Ukrainian constitution and other laws and possibly high treason. Therefore, in any circumstances, it needs to be found out what Viktor Yanukovych in fact signed with the president of Russia,” Tomenko said.
British journalist Edward Lucas, international editor of The Economist, said earlier with reference to “good” sources that Yanukovych had signed an agreement with Russia, including Ukraine’s obligation to join the Customs Union in the near future. “Hearing [Yanukovych] in Sochi today signed strategic agrt w Russia includes $5BN+ up front, gas price $200+agrt to join customs union,” Lucas said on Twitter in the early hours of Saturday. He also added later, “Cash for Yanukovych may be up to $15BN.”
It was reported earlier that Yanukovych and Putin met in Sochi on Friday. “The chiefs of state discussed trade and economic cooperation in various fields of the economy and preparations for a future strategic partnership treaty,” the Ukrainian presidential press service said in commenting on the meeting on Friday.
When asked what is implied by a future strategic partnership agreement the Ukrainian and Russian presidents discussed on Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara said at a press conference on Friday evening: “There is a need to continue negotiations on issues of which the president of Ukraine has said, in particular, on fully resuming trade turnover with the Russian Federation and continuing the negotiations on the price for gas that Russian companies sell in Ukraine.”
“We will welcome any agreements on these issues, which will probably be formalized in some statements, declarations, treaties and so on,” he said.
