Moscow confirms food embargo
We’ll not ‘abandon’ Russians in Ukraine: Putin
MOSCOW, Dec 21, (Agencies): Russia will introduce a food embargo against Ukraine next month over Kiev’s trade deal with the EU, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday, extending punitive measures already in place against Western countries.
“These measures will be extended to Ukraine too,” Medvedev said at a government meeting. “I have just signed the relevant decree.”
A free trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union is set to enter into force from January 1 as part of a broader agreement that helped sparked the current crisis between Kiev and the West on one side and Moscow on the other.
Russia has repeatedly expressed concern that Ukraine’s free trade agreement with Brussels may flood its market with European goods, and months of three-way talks with the EU to smooth the transition have yielded no results.
President Vladimir Putin last week ordered a suspension of Russia’s 2011 free trade agreement with Ukraine.
The move will effectively raise customs tariffs for Ukrainian exporters to Russia by seven percent.
“We must protect our market and our producers and to prevent import of products masked as Ukrainian that are from other countries,” Medvedev said.
“There have been several rounds of talks. They did not bring any result,” he added.
“Neither Ukraine nor the European Union are ready to sign a legally binding agreement which would take into account Russia’s interests.”
Moscow’s slapped a ban on a large
when a population exchange effectively split the island between a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south. (AFP)
FM denounces moves:
Luxembourg’s foreign minister is denouncing moves by the new Polish government array of agricultural produce from the EU and other nations inluding the United States in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanction against Russia over its meddling in Ukraine.
Medvedev’s announcement came as European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom was engaged in the latest attempt to reach common ground on the issue with Russia’s Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in Brussels.
Putin will not abandon Russians living in southeast Ukraine to Ukrainian nationalists, the state-run RIA news agency quoted him as saying in a documentary due to be broadcast later on Sunday.
Threat
Moscow says Ukrainian nationalists pose a threat to ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the region. More than 9,000 people have been killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops since April 2014.
“We proceed from only one thing, which is we cannot just abandon the people who live in the southeast of the country to nationalists to eat them up,” Putin said.
“There is nothing excessive in that position.” He did not elaborate. Putin has denied allegations by independent observers and media that Russian regular troops are taking part in the conflict. However, on Friday he admitted that Russia did have personnel in eastern Ukraine who were carrying out certain military tasks.
to reduce the ability of the nation’s top court to act as a check the government’s power, suggesting that the European Union may have to intervene.
Since taking power last month, the Law and Justice party has moved to stack the Constitutional Tribunal with its supporters and now plans legislation that would endanger
Russia is not trying to bring back the USSR, President Vladimir Putin said in a documentary aired Sunday, but the problem is that “nobody wants to believe it”.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, which saw pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych ousted by proEuropean demonstrators, Moscow has accused the West of using “the politics of containment” in a Cold War throwback.
“With Ukraine and other areas of the former USSR, I’m sure our Western partners aren’t working in the interests of Ukraine, they are working to prevent the recreation of the USSR,” he said in “World Order”, a documentary broadcast on the public Rossiya 1 channel.
“But nobody wants to believe us, nobody wants to believe that we’re not trying to bring the Soviet Union back,” he said.
The president also used the documentary to take a familiar swipe at Western intervention in North Africa and the Middle East.
Putin says Russia will continue to develop nuclear weapons but doesn’t intend to use them.
MOSCOW:
Also:
Russia has reinforced its air base in Armenia with attack and transport helicopters, Interfax news agency cited the Russian military as saying on Monday.
A total of six Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters have been sent to the base near the capital city of Yerevan, Interfax reported. Russia deployed seven helicopters to Armenia earlier in December.
its ability to rule on contentious issues.
Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told Germany’s ZDF television Monday developments in Poland are “frightening.”
He added that the Polish government apparently doesn’t know “that we are a community of values, that we not only