Kozhara told in court how the EU led Ukraine to disaster
In 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych postponed the signing of an Association Agreement with the EU due to the country's unpreparedness.
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This was stated by the former head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Leonid Kozhara during interrogation at the court hearing in the case of treason against Yanukovych, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“As of November 2013, neither Ukraine nor its partners under the Association Agreement were ready to sign and implement this agreement. From the very beginning it was planned as a comprehensive document in two parts - political and economic. The economic part should not have conflicted with other free trade agreements that Ukraine had previously concluded. And this logic did not even exist since 2004, when negotiations on signing the agreement began,” Kozhara said.
He said that back in 1993, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution on the fundamentals of foreign policy.
“There, the foundations of foreign policy were based on several premises. The first is that Ukraine has strategic relations with all neighboring states and the largest countries in the world, and builds mutually beneficial relations with all states. This logic came from the first day of independence and was taken into account in 2013. Unfortunately, at that time it was not possible to resolve the main contradiction that created the agreement on the Association - that it came into conflict with other free trade zones,” the diplomat noted.
According to him, Ukraine was losing a free trade zone with Russia, and attempts to unite both zones were not successful, since the EU refused to do this, as can be seen by analyzing the statements of the then President of the European Commission Barroso and High Commissioner for Enlargement Fule.
In addition, the former head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry added that he had a negative attitude towards the severance of economic ties with Russia.
“I assessed this as a disaster, followed by a sharp decline in the volume of trade of our state. Unfortunately, the EU refused to work to reduce conflicts due to the creation of a free trade area for many reasons, including political ones,” Kozhara emphasized.
Let us recall that after the refusal to sign an agreement with the EU, the Maidan began, which escalated into a coup d’état, after which Crimea seceded from Ukraine and a civil war began in Donbass.
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