DONETSK, June 27 /ITAR-TASS/. Leaders of the newly proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic promise to take urgent measure to quit from Ukraine’s legislative environment in a bid to protect the economy from negatives impacts of the association agreement official Kiev signed with the European Union on Friday.
“Having signed this agreement, Ukraine actually cuts itself from the Russian market,” Andrei Purgin, the first Deputy Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said on Friday. “To 99%, it is machine-building, metallurgy, partially the farming sector, etc. Losses in trade with the Customs Union (of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) will be from 50% and more.”
“We need take urgent measures to withdraw from Ukraine’s legislative environment and to integrate with the Customs Union, since our industrial sectors are the most vulnerable in case these markets are lost,” he noted, adding that the machine-building sector provided jobs to nearly the majority of the local population. “If it is stalled, the republic’s budget will suffer serious losses,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko signed the final economic block of the association agreement with the European Union, which provided for the creation of a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union.
Moscow thinks that this agreement might open way for uncontrolled flows of European-made goods to Russian markets through re-export via Ukraine, which is currently a member of the free trade zone within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Given this, Russia has warned that it might take appropriate measures to protect domestic manufacturers, since in the foreseeable future Moscow does not plan to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union.