Dropped Agreements

From Yahoo:
"Ukraine rips up key cooperation deals with Russia"

Kiev lawmakers on Thursday annulled five crucial security agreements with Moscow that had allowed Russia to transport troops to a separatist region of Moldova and purchase weapons that are only produced in Ukraine. The deals were suspended when Kiev accused the Kremlin of fomenting a pro-Russian revolt in Ukraine's industrial east 13 months ago that has killed 6,250 and left the ex-Soviet state's economy in ruins. But Thursday's decision means that legislative support from Ukraine's dominant nationalist and pro-European parties would be required before such cooperation could resume once the separatist conflict is resolved. It also underscores how little a truce deal reached in February has done to rebuild trust between Moscow and Kiev. "I know of no other country that continues to be friends with a neighbour that kills your people," prominent pro-EU deputy Mustafa Nayyem wrote on Facebook. "And only recently I learned that we still have international agreements with Russia concerning military and technological cooperation!" The five laws include a strategic agreement allowing Moscow to send peacekeeping forces across Ukraine to Moldova's Russian-speaking Transdniester region. A top Ukrainian state security official told AFP that the transports' abrupt interruption had caught Moscow off guard when they first went into effect about a year ago. The same source said Moscow has since found new avenues by which to supply troops in the self-declared state.  But several senior Russian officials signalled their alarm at the sudden complication. "There is no other way for us reach (Transdniester) other than through Ukraine," an unnamed diplomat in Russia's foreign ministry told Interfax. "We have to think and look for alternatives. We cannot abandon Transdniester and Moldova," the Russian parliament's defence committee head Vladimir Komoyedov added. A second politically-charged agreement cancelled by Kiev required the neighbours to protect each others' state secrets. It was initially adopted with the arrival of one-time spy Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in 2000. Another law covered basic Russian military transports across Ukraine and a fourth concerned mutual arms purchases. Ukraine inherited several huge Soviet-era arms manufacturing sites that formed the backbone of Russia's armed forces. The final law covered intelligence sharing between the two sides. "Many Ukrainians must have learned with some surprise today that these laws were still around," Kiev's Razumkov Centre analyst Oleksiy Melnyk told AFP. Ukraine's Western allies have encouraged parliament to spend less time on populist -- and often little-more than symbolic -- measures and to focus instead on the numerous laws needed to get the recession-hit economy back on track. But some analysts said Thursday's legislation meant that crucial links that tied Moscow and Kiev over the past two decades have been ruptured for many years to come. Pro-Russian legislators that supported these laws at the expense of closer links with NATO and the European Union were trounced in the November election and at present appear a longshot at making a comeback in the 2019 parliamentary vote. "The chances of Ukraine and Russia resuming the type of military and technological cooperation that they enjoyed just a few years ago appear highly unlikely in the mid-term perspective," independent military analyst Mykhaylo Pashkov said in an interview. "Russia's foreign policy approach is also unlikely to change under Putin," he added. "There is little chance that he will take a benevolent view of Ukraine in the next few years."

Pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko has pledged to adopt all the reforms needed for Ukraine to join the European Union by 2020.

 

^ It had amazed me since the Russians got involved in the Crimea and then eastern Ukraine over a year ago that the Ukrainians were still dealing with Russia in numerous fields even while Russia invaded, occupied and annexed part of their country. It should be noted that Russia voided key agreements with the Ukraine first (ie dealing with the Black Sea Fleet, etc.) The Ukraine has every right to expect that its territory not be used by foreign powers and when Russia invaded the Crimea they (the Russians) were clearly in the wrong and started the rapid downward slope that has come over the past year. It is "good" to see the Ukraine finally removing these agreements with Russia - I suspect that the government in Kyiv held out for so long hoping that the international community could convince Russia to stop supporting the ethnic Russian terrorists in eastern Ukraine and to also return the Crimea to the Ukraine - that has failed and so this is one step that the Ukraine has to make. Russia can continue to try and play the victim in all of this, but no one is buying what they are selling. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-rips-key-cooperation-deals-russia-100539437.html