Ukraine's observer status in the Customs Union will help weigh up all the pros and cons of the union, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko has said.

"The receipt by Ukraine of observer status will help it accurately weigh up the pros and cons of the Customs Union," the deputy prime minister's press service quoted him as saying in an interview with Inter TV Channel.

Boiko added that the negotiations were currently being held at the bilateral level.

"We are now holding talks in a bilateral format with our partners - Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. After this process is completed, we will start holding talks with the Eurasian Commission," he said.

Boiko noted that there were a lot of statements on the development of Ukraine's cooperation with the Customs Union and the European Union, but most of them were purely political and not based on economic calculations.

On April 23, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that Ukraine had reached a tentative agreement about getting observer status in the Customs Union, which could be formalized at a meeting with the leadership of this organization in late May.

At the same time, Russian Deputy Minister for Economic Development Alexei Likhachev said that this issue had not been resolved and that negotiations with the Ukrainian side were currently continuing at a bilateral level with the member countries of the Customs Union and at the level of the council of the Eurasian Economic Commission, which serves as a supranational regulatory body of this union.