Moscow starts realizing plan to prevent Ukraine from signing Association Agreement with EU and pull country to Customs Union, say media reports
Russian authorities have started realizing a strategy of preventing Ukraine from signing the Association Agreement with the EU and pulling it to the Customs Union, the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. Ukraine (ZN.UA) reported on Saturday.
In the article entitled "Russian Plan, Conscious and Pitiless" Editor-in-Chief Yulia Mostova and a commentator of international politics department Tetiana Silina pointed at the non-randomness of the non-prolongation of the quotas for duty-free imports of Ukrainian pipes for the second half of the year, a ban on imports of Roshen's products and problems on the Russian border for products of almost 50 Ukrainian companies.
Authors, referring to own sources, said that until recently Russia has not considered the economic war as a key instrument for preventing Ukraine from approaching EU and signing the Association Agreement, as Moscow was sure that staying of Yulia Tymoshenko in jail is the most effective guarantee of the fact that the Association Agreement is not signed.
However, in early June, Moscow received the stunning information from Berlin: Merkel does not believe that Tymoshenko's imprisonment can be an insuperable obstacle for the Association with Ukraine.
A strategy for not allowing the signing of the Association Agreement with EU by Ukraine and pulling it to the Customs Union has been urgently drawn up.
According to ZN.UA, Russian President Vladimir Putin "considered a possibility of another meeting with Yanukovych this weekend. The Kazakh counterpart was to join the two presidents in Crimea on August 17-18, 2013. Putin demanded the concrete result. Due to the fact that Kyiv has not waved the white flag, the visit was canceled," the newspaper said.