The Ukrainian parliament ratified a free trade zone agreement on Monday with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The Economic Council of the CIS states approved in April 2011 a draft agreement on a free trade zone that would move the grouping of most of the former Soviet republics further toward liberalized trade. The agreement was signed in October 2011. Ukraine became only the third country which ratified it after Russia and Belarus.
The CIS includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
The document was originally drafted by Russia's Economic Development Ministry in 2008. The agreement stipulates cutting import duties to a minimum, and suggests that export duties be harmonized and eventually abolished.
Ukraine, whose trade with the CIS countries amounts to $140 billion a year, also intends to go ahead with its plans to create a free trade zone with the European Union. EU-Ukrainian relations were damaged by last year’s jailing of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko over a gas deal with Russia, which was declared by the government of harming the country's economy.
European authorities have declared Tymoshenko’s trial politically motivated and have called for her to be released.
