Trade agreement between Europe and Ukraine enter into force and Russia imposes sanctions

The country's rapprochement with the European Union ended agreement existing since 2011 between Kiev and Moscow



The trade agreement between the European Union and Ukraine, which comes in today (1) in force, will facilitate Ukrainian exports and European investments, but implies economic restrictions imposed by Russia in retaliation for bringing the country closer to Europe.


"We are ready to pay the price of our freedom and our European choice," he said in December the Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, to seal in Brussels the Comprehensive Agreement and Free Trade In depth.

The price was set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who decided to suspend the free trade agreement that united Moscow and Kiev since 2011, citing "circumstances that harm the interests and economic security" of Russia.

It is, according to Moscow, to avoid a massive influx of cheaper European products, with Ukrainian label, the Russian market.

In addition to the 2011 pact suspension, Moscow will extend the embargo to Ukraine to European food decided in retaliation for economic sanctions imposed on it after the annexation of the Crimea in March 2014.

In response, Kiev also announced the suspension of the trade pact with Russia, starting tomorrow (2), and a ban on imports of Russian food, from the 10th, to Ukraine and later in the Crimea peninsula It has no land connection with Russia and depends largely of Ukrainian products.

The trade agreement EU-Ukraine is part of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement signed on 27 June 2014, a political and trade pact considered a first step to a future membership of the bloc.

This agreement gave rise to the conflict in Ukraine, initiated in 2014 with the popular challenge to the decision of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich not to sign the pact, followed by deposition of the separatist insurgency in the east and the annexation of Crimea by Russia.