Recently Russia has escalated its trade war with Ukraine, leader of Batkivschyna faction Arseniy Yatseniuk has said.
“Our neighbors prohibited imports of Ukrainian meat, milk, cheese, and put restrictions on supplies of sugar, confectioneries. The intentions of Russian officials to boost taxes on imports of Ukrainian chocolate, sugar, float glass, and coal, and yesterday’s statement by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about extending quotas on imports of Ukrainian pipes to Russia, means nothing less than an escalation of the trade war between our countries, which has been lasting for several years,” reads a statement by Yatseniuk posted on the Web site of the Batkivschyna party on Wednesday.
According to Yatseniuk, such actions by the Russian side “contradict basic statements of the treaty of friendship, cooperation and partnership between Ukraine and Russia, in particular its 13th article, where “high contract parties develop equality and mutual cooperation in economy, and do not take actions that could do economic harm to each other.”
Yatseniuk said that the introduction of new restrictions, which worsen the conditions of supplies of Ukrainian goods to the Russian market, contravenes the agreement on free trade area with the CIS countries that was ratified last year, as well as the basic demands and principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which Ukraine and Russia are members. Finally, it extremely negatively influences a whole range of rather complicated relations between Ukraine and Russia.
“In fact it’s compulsion to enter the Customs Union, as today the Russians like to say. But this isn’t propaganda, but rather counter-propaganda. With such actions Russia only sets Ukrainian citizens against such a counter production policy,” he said.
The leader of Batkivschyna faction called the Russian partners to urgently “sit down to talk, to realize new geopolitical realities, to build our relations with the consideration of new circumstances and a ready fact: European integration is a key choice of Ukraine.”
“Ukraine’s European opposition is ready to build equal, civilized relations with Russia,” he added.
