Ukraine Plots New ‘Silk Road’ to Kazakhstan Skirting Russia

Ukraine Plots New ‘Silk Road’ to Kazakhstan Skirting Russia

In response to Moscow’s trade restrictions, Kyiv will bypass Russia when shipping goods to Kazakhstan, announces counter-sanctions.

14 January 2016

Ukraine will begin exploring new routes to ship its goods to Kazakhstan, a significant trading partner, instead of cutting directly across neighboring Russia, following the Kremlin’s new trade embargo and other restrictions it has imposed on Kyiv.

 

Russia revoked its free-trade agreement with Ukraine area last month in response to its entry into an EU association agreement, which includes a free-trade agreement, and said goods from Ukraine transiting via Russia to Kazakhstan must first pass through checkpoints – in Belarus.

 

Ukrainian Prime Minster Arseniy Yatsenyuk on 11 January released an expanded list of 43 categories of Russian-made products that can no longer be imported into Ukraine, including meat, fish, coffee, filtered cigarettes, beer, tea, vodka and other goods, The Kyiv Post reports.

 

Yatsenyuk said the Kremlin’s most recent steps against Kyiv have “significantly complicated” Ukraine’s trade, but that discussion with his Kazakhstani and Azerbaijani counterparts was already underway for unprecedented deliveries of goods, AFP reports.

 

At a cabinet meeting on 13 January, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarskiy confirmed that “experimental” deliveries of goods would be shipped to Kazakhstan on 15 January via Georgia and Azerbaijan.

 

“The Silk Road will not only give Ukrainian goods alternative access to markets in which we have historically been very strong, but also create a new [trade] route between Asia and Western Europe,” Pyvovarskiy said in televised remarks, according to AFP.

 

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbaev, recently “confirmed willingness to fulfill the effective bilateral and multilateral agreements with Ukraine in order to prevent any discrimination in Ukrainian-Kazakh trade,” according to a summary of their conversation.

 

“Kazakhstan continues to be put in an awkward position between its wider economic interests, its close relationship with Russia, and the (perhaps unintended) consequences of Russia’s trade tussles with Europe,” The Diplomat writes.

 

 

  • Four percent of Ukrainian total agricultural exports transit through Russia to Central Asian countries, Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko wrote on his Facebook page, Interfax reported.

 

  • The European Union delegation to Ukraine has criticized Russia’s imposition of a trade embargo and other restrictions against Ukraine, saying the Kremlin should respect its commitments within the World Trade Organization (WTO), which Kazakhstan recently acceded to and Russia joined in 2012, Interfax reported earlier.

 

  • Dutch banking group ING predicts that Ukraine will become Kazakhstan’s third-largest source of imports by 2017, with the energy-rich Central Asian nation now mainly importing Ukrainian vehicles and transport equipment, according to AFP.

 

 

 

 

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