Ukraine signed a landmark trade and economic pact with the European Union on June 27. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said it is the "most historic day" for Ukraine since it gained independence. ( / European Union)
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine on Friday signed a landmark trade deal to bind itself to the European Union, a monumental step that came in defiance of months of Russian efforts to block the country from turning westward.
The agreement will have “serious consequences” for Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, a top Russian diplomat said immediately after the signing ceremony in Brussels. The decision was also expected to complicate efforts to end more than two months of separatist violence in eastern Ukraine.
It was the same document that was rejected in November by Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych. That decision sparked months of protests by pro-Western Ukrainians, a crackdown by Yanukovych and his eventual ouster in February, leading to the greatest tensions between the West and Russia since the Cold War.
More than 100 protesters died in Kiev under the blue and yellow banner of the European Union, as they took to the streets to demand that Yanukovych reconsider his last-minute decision — made under heavy Russian pressure — to reject the agreement. Hundreds more Ukrainians and dozens of Russians have died in violence in eastern Ukraine since April, when pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings and territory in an effort to align themselves with Russia rather than the European Union.
Friday is “maybe the most important day for my country after independence day,” said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, as he signed the deal in Brussels, using the pen he said Yanukovych would have used in November. “All of us would have wished to sign the agreement under different, more comfortable circumstances. On the other hand, the external aggression faced by Ukraine is another strong reason for this crucial step.”
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, center, poses with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, and European Council President Herman van Rompuy at the E.U. Council in Brussels. (AFP/Getty Images)
“Over the last months, Ukraine paid the highest possible price to make her European dreams come true,” Poroshenko said. “It must be worth something.” He called for E.U. leaders to offer assurances that Ukraine could one day become a full member and said Ukraine was committed to joining the union.
Two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova, also signed the telephone-book-thick trade deals with the European Union on Friday, in the face of Russian threats of tough consequences if they did so. The agreements will require them to enact economic reforms, as well as to meet E.U. standards for government contracting, cutting down on the corruption that has plagued all three societies since their independence.
Russia has said that it views the expansion of E.U. ties to its border as a Western encroachment on a region that has long been within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. Russia has sought to enlist those countries in the Eurasian Union, its competing vision of an alliance based on values dominated by Moscow and free of Western influence.
E.U. leaders — along with those of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova — have said that the deal does not constitute a challenge to Russia.
“The anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and attempts to artificially impose a choice between Europe and Russia on the Ukrainian people have pushed society toward a split and painful confrontation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Moscow on Friday.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said the deal would “no doubt . . . have serious consequences,” Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.
The agreements will open the vast 28-nation E.U. market, with its 504 million residents, to tariff-free exports from the countries in exchange for gradual work toward bringing regulations up to European standards. Leaders in all three countries hope to follow the model of Poland and the Baltic nations, former Eastern bloc states that are now E.U. members and whose economies have grown significantly in the 23 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, by contrast, have struggled.
Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine release four out of eight international observers captured over a month ago. The remaining four are still in captivity. ( / Reuters)
The agreement makes no promises of eventual full E.U. membership, a step the three countries have said they would like to take. E.U. leaders have been cautious about commitment to that measure, which would mean opening their labor market to the countries’ citizens. With 46 million residents, Ukraine is more populous than all but five of the E.U. countries.
Many Ukrainians are also cautious about joining the European Union, with polls showing about half in favor, while about a third favor joining the Eurasian Union. Before the crisis, Ukraine’s trade volumes with the European Union and Russia were roughly equal. Workers in Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east are particularly dependent on business with Russia — trade that was likely to be slashed by the new tariffs Russia has threatened to introduce on Ukrainian goods.
E.U. leaders met immediately after the signing ceremony to discuss whether to impose new sanctions on Russia over its conduct in Ukraine. They decided against doing so but gave Russia until Monday to push rebels toward peace.
The leaders called on the Kremlin “to actively use its influence over the illegally armed groups and to stop the flow of weapons and militants across the border.” That suggests they might impose further sanctions Monday unless Russia helps implement a durable cease-fire and pushes separatists to hand back captured Ukrainian border checkpoints and to release a team of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that was captured in eastern Ukraine a month ago.
Rebels in Donetsk early Friday released four of the OSCE observers. Four others were still being held in the neighboring Luhansk region.
Russia annexed Ukraine’s autonomous Crimea region in March after pro-Russian separatists there staged an independence referendum, and Kiev has accused Moscow of aiding the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The E.U. agreements are “milestones in the history of our relations and of Europe as a whole,” said European Council President Herman van Rompuy at Friday’s ceremony. “In Kiev and elsewhere, people gave their lives for this closer link to the European Union. We will not forget them.”
The signature ceremony in Brussels took place as a temporary cease-fire in eastern Ukraine was set to expire Friday evening. Poroshenko told reporters in Brussels that he would decide later Friday whether to extend the truce. Hostilities continued after separatist leaders agreed to the cease-fire on Monday, including the Tuesday downing of a Ukrainian military helicopter, and both sides accused each other of violating the truce.
The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that 110,000 Ukrainians had fled to Russia since the beginning of the year and that an additional 54,000 remained in Ukraine but had left their homes.
Russia has applied heavy pressure on its neighbors not to sign the deals, called “association agreements.” It banned imports of Moldovan wine last year, cut off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine last week and said it would raise tariffs on imports from all three countries in response to the deal.
Those steps are likely to impose significant economic hardships on the countries, which remain closely tied to Russia as an export market. Armenia, another former Soviet republic that was also due to sign the agreement, reversed course in September when Russia lobbied intensely for it not to do so.
“We will, of course, take protective measures” against the countries that sign the agreement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday, Interfax reported.
In addition to Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia also face pro-Russian separatist movements on their soil, and officials in all three countries have expressed fears that Russia will stoke tensions even further after the E.U. deal. Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008 in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and Russian soldiers are stationed as peacekeepers in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria. The separatists in eastern Ukraine have also declared their intention to create an independent state.
“This is a civilizational choice, especially now when you have Russian aggression against its strategic partner,” said Oleksiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy. “They say that we are a brother nation, but we have undeclared war and aggression.”
Michael Birnbaum is The Post’s Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.
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