Chairs for “pragmatists”

“The major positive result of the discussion,” Ukrainian Prime Mi-nister Mykola Azarov said yesterday, while summing up the negotiations with Vladimir Putin, “was that the Russian Prime Minister pro-mised to entrust his deputy Igor Sechin, during his visit to Ukraine on April 19, with discussing with the government of Ukraine the issue of the validity of all formulas used for the gas price formation for Ukraine.” In his turn, Azarov entrusted the negotiations with Sechin to First Deputy Premier Andrii

Kliuiev and Energy Minister Yurii Boiko, instructing them to use all available arguments, information and analyses of the conditions of natural gas supply to other countries, in particular, to the EU.

He also described the consequences of “shackling Ukraine” with the gas agreement signed by the previous government. “Until we revise it, Ukraine will be fettered in its development, we will reap the fruits of surrendering our national interests by our predecessors every day,” the premier said.

But did he deliberately overlook the fact that the gas prices were not the most important issue of the table? As it is known, the Russian leadership is luring Ukraine into the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and thus trying to sabotage the already advanced negotiations with the EU on the deep and comprehensive free trade area.

It looks like the Ukrainian go-vernment is uneven in its approach to this issue. For example, Deputy Prime Minister and Social Policy Minister Serhii Tihipko has his own opinion on it. “Indeed, at first there will be a direct quick advantage (from joining the Customs Union – Author.),” he explains his viewpoint. “In this case it goes without saying, because we will shift to internal gas prices, which are cheaper in the Customs Union, and to internal oil prices.” However, Tihipko points out: “If one regards the medium-term perspective, the European Union with its huge market is very appealing to us. And the countries which constitute the European Union or had an Association Agreement got immense advantages [from this] and their economies eventually experienced significant development.” What shall one do? According to Tihipko, Ukraine must continue with European integration and the association agreement and FTA negotiations, but at the same time “pursue friendly relations and maintain as open economic relations with the Customs Union as possible.”

Actually, this paraphrases President Viktor Yanukovych, who previously claimed that joining the EU was a strategic course for Ukraine, while introducing an ill-defined “3+1” formula in regards to the Customs Union.

So why the meeting? It looks like the parties hoped to make concessions behind-the-scenes. On the one hand Russia tried to entice Ukraine with promises of oil and gas, while Ukraine brought up the specter of the case against Tymoshenko for abusing national interests in signing the 2009 gas contract. Was it raised before these negotiations by accident? The question is what Putin, who didn’t do anything wrong to his country, has to do with it?

Hanna Herman, the president’s advisor, told UNIAN that the results of the meeting of President Yanukovych and the Russian premier lied in “national pragmatism from both the Ukrainian and Rus-sian sides.” “Today’s modern politicians left the language of emotions and sentiments for actors and directors and applied exclusively the rhetoric of national pragmatism, realizing the national interests of each of the states,” Herman said. How-ever, she was also among those who tiptoed around the topic of Ukraine trying to sit on two horses at the same time.

In the mean time economists are kept guessing as to what this means. “I think this is a version which is not finalized yet,” Anton Filipenko, pre-sident of the Ukrainian Association of International Economists, doctor of economics, told The Day. “This is the level where such decisions are not taken. It was a considerable step, an attempt to make an emphasis and find out [the various] positions.”