KIEV, May 19. /TASS/. Ukraine is severing military-technological cooperation with Russia, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk has said.
"We are terminating the operation of the 1993 agreement on military-technological cooperation with Russia," he said at the government’s meeting on Wednesday.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union Ukraine remained a country possessing a great number of enterprises tightly integrated with the Russian defence-industrial complex, including nearly one-third of the former USSR’s missile and aircraft design bureaus.
On May 26, 1993 the governments of Russia and Ukraine concluded an agreement on military-technological cooperation. In it, the signatories pledged to preserve and develop cooperation in developing and providing military products, carry out their mutual supplies and render military services.
The military-technological cooperation agreement also prohibits the sale and hand-over of military products and information about it to foreign individuals, legal entities or international organizations without the original owner’s prior consent.
Starting from March 2014 Ukraine suspended the delivery of military products to Russia. On June 16 of the same year President Petro Poroshenko prohibited all cooperation with Russia in the defence-industrial complex sphere.
On August 27 the National Security and Defence Council instructed the Cabinet of ministers to take measures to terminate the export of military or dual use products to Russia, except for space technologies employed in research and in using outer space for civilian purposes under international space projects.