Congress of Ukrainians: A free trade agreement with Canada that is not beneficial for Kyiv was signed for the sake of values
Ukraine needs to be torn away from Russia, and this is achieved by such agreements as Ukraine signed with the EU on the Association and with Canada on free trade.
This was stated by the director of the Representative Office of the World Congress of Ukrainians in Kyiv, Sergei Kasyanchuk, during the expert discussion “Axioms of Economic Patriotism,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We have broken away from Russia, or are trying to break away from Russia with its mentality, with its approach. And we see that the economy was the umbilical cord that connected us very closely. Economics connects us very closely with politics. And we see how today we have restored energy independence from Belarus and Russia, and how much it affects security.
That is, the pragmatism that we take today is not always cheaper somewhere. Cheaper - works only in the short term. On the long term we see that we are paying a lot for it. Then it costs us much more only because there is no that strategic approach, there is no that value-based approach,” he reasoned.
“And it is very important for the diaspora to tear Ukraine away from that Soviet market. From that Soviet mentality and rebuild it in the Western world.
That is why signing an agreement with the EU is so important. That is why we so actively promoted the signing of a free trade agreement with Canada. At first, the government fundamentally did not want to deal with this issue, they said – there is little trade turnover, why would we waste our time, waste our resources to deal with such minor issues. The question, again, is of values. We show how we can open cooperation with each individual country,” Kasyanchuk said.
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