NEWSLINK: Ukraine Signs Trade Agreement With European Union

[“Ukraine Signs Trade Agreement With European Union” – New York Times – ANDREW HIGGINS and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN – June 27, 2014]

The New York Times reports on Ukraine and the European Union reaching a sweeping trade deal, one that had been the original impetus for protests effectively upending the earlier Ukrainian regime of Viktor Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, Russia has threatened serious consequences in response.

Seven months after Ukraine’s former president Viktor F. Yanukovych rejected a sweeping trade deal with the European Union and set off protests that drove him from power, Ukraine’s new leader on Friday concluded the pact, which Russia has bitterly opposed as a threat to its own economic and strategic interests in the former Soviet Union.

The news agency Interfax in Moscow quoted Russia’s deputy foreign minister as warning that “serious consequences” would follow the signing of a deal that Moscow has long worked to derail.

Petro O. Poroshenko, a confectionary mogul who won Ukraine’s presidential elections in May to fill a post left vacant by Mr. Yanukovych’s flight from the country in February, signed the so-called Association Agreement at the Brussels headquarters of the European Union shortly before a summit meeting of leaders of the bloc’s 28 countries.

Poroshenko is highlighting the need for peace and security, along with other expected benefits from the closer association with the EU.

In a statement issued by his office, Mr. Poroshenko said: ‘This is one of the most important days in the time since Ukraine won independence. We use this possibility to modernize the country. But we need only one thing – peace and security.’

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