The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, has approved a bill suspending the Free Trade Area (FTA) Treaty with Ukraine starting from January 1, 2016.

This bill was proposed by the Russian president as the trade and economic part of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement will start to be applied from January 1, 2016 in the absence of any legally binding agreements that would meet Russia's interests, a circumstance that marks a drastic change of the circumstances that were crucial to Russia when concluding the Free Trade Area Treaty with Ukraine, documents accompanying the bill say.

The document also says that a decision on Russia's possible resumption of this treaty will be adopted by the Russian president.