Ukraine ups ante against Russia
Kyiv lawmakers yesterday 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 Kyiv 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 the 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 Kyiv.
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 Kyiv 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.
Some analysts said Thursday’s legislation meant that crucial links that tied Moscow and Kyiv 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.
Pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko has pledged to adopt all the reforms needed for Ukraine to join the European Union by 2020.