Ukraine plans to modernize its defense and industrial complex and boost military and technical cooperation with Western counties, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said.
Commenting on the government’s vision of ways of the development of the defense and industrial complex, he said on the Shuster Live news program late on March 29 that production facilities remain and the government plans to modernize what the country has.
Yatseniuk said that the task on technical re-equipment of the army would be resolved as a part of the development of military and technical cooperation with western counties.
“Technical upgrades will be carried out thanks to cooperation with the West, as we won’t manage by ourselves. Russia has invested many funds in the modernization of its defense and industrial complex. We are lagging behind in high-tech equipment, and until we start own production, we’ll have to use someone else’s equipment, and we’re working on this now,” he said.
Asked about the government’s position in the issue of the possibility of military and technical cooperation with Russia in the conditions of the military aggression, Yatseniuk said: “We won’t produce weapons and then sell it to the country which is invading our territory and uses these armaments to shoot at us.”
Commenting on Ukrainian-Russian economic cooperation in general, the premier said: “The position of the government… we haven’t canceled any bilateral agreement. We’re ready to fulfill all agreements on the equal conditions and continue economic cooperation.”
“We have friendly relations with the Russian people, but the Russian regime is a regime of aggression, this is a regime that has seized our territories,” he said.
“Sooner or later we’ll have to sit at the negotiating table, but it is not very nice to negotiate with a gun at your head,” Yatseniuk said.
He said that Ukraine decided that the country will negotiate with Russia openly jointly with international partners, but not only Ukraine and Russia as “they will deceive us.”
