Trudeau said the two leaders had a brief conversation on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk has said his country’s economy has prepared for a Russian embargo, acknowledging that with Ukraine’s economic shift to the West, a few sanctions from Russia were inevitable.
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French President Francois Hollande, who has discussed increasing coordination of military action in Syria with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, will pay the first bilateral visit to Moscow by an European Union leader in six months next week.
Russia has continued to deny any direct involvement in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine that began in April 2014 and has resulted in widespread destruction as Ukrainian government forces fight Russian-backed separatists.
“Given that Ukraine supports the anti-Russian sanctions, both the economic and the financial sanctions, we made a decision to take protectionist measures in the form of a food embargo”, said the Minister. Ukraine has included the Eurobond among the sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed bonds to be restructured in a deal with a group of its largest creditors in order to plug a $15 billion funding gap under an IMF-led $40 billion bailout program.
Meanwhile, trade turnover between Russian Federation and Ukraine in January-September 2015 amounted to $10.87 billion, of which the imports of Ukrainian production accounted to $4.24 billion.
The proposal was an easing of Moscow’s previous demand that Ukraine repay the loan in full by the end of this year.
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Talking at an administration meeting, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he expected a facilitated commerce understanding between his nation and the European Union to enter power from January 1, 2016. A few analysts have also been skeptical about the scale of Russia’s concessions. “The ceasefire is very shaky at its edges”, said Alexander Hug, deputy chief monitor with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s mission in Ukraine. “In particular, I think asking for guarantees puts the status of the debt way senior to the private sector”.
