On the geopolitical front, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s relationships with Russia to the east and Europe to the west are currently going through a testy period. Which is putting it mildly. The struggle for Ukraine’s future between Brussels and Moscow is one of the most tense and high-stakes geopolitical stand-offs between the two sides in recent years.
Russian pressure, domestic politics and Yanukovich’s attempts to play east and west against each other – offering to sign with whichever side provides the bigger bailout for his ailing economy – may all have factored in on his government’s stunning decision last week to back out of historic EU integration agreements.
Today, it looks almost certain that far-reaching association and free trade agreements which were to be signed this Thursday and Friday at an EU Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius will remain dry.
Yet in the midst of this commotion, Yanukovich’s government on Wednesday inked a strategically important hydrocarbon exploration and production agreement with Italy’s Eni and France’s EDF.
The president himself was present for the signing as thousands of pro-EU protesters took to Kiev’s streets, pressuring him to sign the EU integration agreements for a seventh straight day.
Read more here.
