Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has described bilateral relations between Ukraine and the United States as fruitful.
"We highly appreciate support the United States has been offering over all the years of Ukraine’s independence," he said during the Atlantic Council of the United States in New York on Thursday.
"Thank you for your assistance in overcoming the consequences of the financial and economic crisis, holding economic and energy reforms, as well as strengthening the standards of democracy."
Yanukovych noted that the United States and Ukraine have been fruitfully cooperating and will continue to cooperate in the international arena.
The Ukrainian president stressed the importance of the cooperation in the sphere of nuclear safety, at the same time noting the importance of their being balance in relations between Ukraine and Europe, the United States and Russia.
The president also assured that Kyiv is working to give up all nuclear resources. Saying this, Yanukovych noted the great significance of holding a conference on the Chornobyl problem in Kyiv next year.
"We hope for the United States’ active participation in this extremely important event," he added.
In addition, Yanukovych reminded that he had offered U.S. President Barack Obama proposals to extend the geography of bilateral contacts.
"I am happy to report that the U.S. president supported such an approach," he said.
The Ukrainian president also noted that both the president and the secretary of state of the United States had supported Ukraine’s policy to "correct Ukraine’s course of European integration and declare nonalignment as the main guideline for Ukraine in the security sphere."
According to Yanukovych, the term "nonalignment" is not the best one, but "we should acknowledge that this was the Ukrainian people’s choice."
"By the way, the term ‘nonalignment’ is, probably, not the most optimal, as long as the era of military alliances has passed into the past together with ‘the Cold War’… I think that the principle of our state’s non-participation in any military and political alliances corresponds to modern geopolitical reality," the president said.
Yanukovych said that the declaration of Ukraine’s nonaligned status at the legislative level had relieved tensions inside the country and across the whole European continent.
