Launching of a new fight for freedom and independence
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s yesterday’s working visit to Moscow was closely watched not only in Ukraine, but in Russia, too. With regard to Russian-Ukrainian relations, the visit, so to speak, was decisive, and it took place in the background of persistent and consistent struggle of the Ukrainian society. It has been four weeks since the Ukrainian society compels from the government to reconcile with the idea that the society of the country has made its choice, and sees the development path of Ukraine in universal European values.
We learned from the Kremlin press service that the agenda of the Russian-Ukrainian intergovernmental committee presided by leader of Russia and Ukraine include the issues on bilateral relations in trade, energy, transport, agriculture, and financial investment. “Serious consideration will be allocated to joint projects on culture, education and science. Issues on cooperation within CIS framework and urgent international developments would also be discussed,” said the Kremlin message. According to various sources, the agenda covered a large package of bilateral documents.
At the Russian-Ukrainian interstate relations session, the issue of allocating credit to Ukraine was also discussed, which reaches up to 15 billion dollars, as well as the issue of Russian gas tariff for Ukraine. During the meeting with Yanukovych, yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed hope that a progress will be recorded in the Russian-Ukrainian sensitive matters. Putin stated that Ukraine is Russia’s strategic partner, he expressed regret that the volume of turnover between the two countries has been somewhat reduced in the last two years. Putin stressed that, lately, the governments of two countries have worked well in sensitive areas of energy, engineering, space, aviation, shipbuilding, and that today there emerges an opportunity to ratify the contract-legal base. Putin and Yanukovych did not touch upon the subject of the Customs Union.
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Russian “Gazprom” and “Naftogaz” companies of Ukraine have signed amendments to the contracts on purchase-and-sale and transmission of natural gas, according to which, within the next ten years, the price of gas for Ukraine will amount to $ 268.5 for a thousand cubic meters. After the signing of the documents, the President of the Russian Federation noted that the current lowering of the gas price for Ukraine is temporary, Russia is ready to further come to meet its partners, but possibly to actual effectiveness.
Regardless of how the Russian-Ukrainian official negotiations and their results are accepted in Maidan, it should be noted that what happened last week was also a major stimulus for the Russian society, because the problem is not so much drawing parallels between the Customs Union and the EU free market and finding comparison between them rather than finding answers to more fundamental issues.
In fact, today, a situation is created when the post Soviet republics, unwittingly, seems to facing the imperative of making a choice. Of course, the Kremlin is somehow pushing towards making the choice, where the tough policy to the former Soviet Union republics is no longer a secret.
However, the problem is that the the choice between the EU Association Agreement and the Customs Union, which was initially considered “artificial”, now has become a demand of a real choice, an issue of making a choice between today’s Russia and universal real values, an imperative of a new struggle.
Certainly, Russians are also going to face the choice, and Ukraine, in some sense, awakens the people of Russia. The estimates are not quite exaggerated that, in these days, not only the issue of Ukraine is decided in Kiev, but also the fate of the entire post-Soviet area, including Armenia. One day, Russian society like any other society striving for freedom and legality and experiencing development, would resist against the Putin regime, and one other day, the Belarusian people would resist against Batka power.
Euromaidan is actually becoming a beginning of a new wave for post-Soviet republics, and, perhaps, its first sprouts may appear in today’s Russia, where the political elite maybe does not realize that unwittingly an attitude, an atmosphere is formed about Russia, which further more pushes the post-Soviet countries away from it rather than pulls towards it. This atmosphere is a kind of hanging in the air, it is so pronounced, but something is changing. Euromaidan seems to announce launching of a new fight for freedom and independence.
Emma GABRIELYAN
