Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych met Russia’s Vladimir Putin yesterday to lay the grounds for a new “strategic partnership” to shore up Ukraine’s creaking economy in defiance of protesters back home enraged by his U-turn away from Europe.
The leaders met in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in Russia, after Yanukovych flew in for an unannounced stop on his way back from China to map out a new agreement on trade and economic cooperation, a statement on Yanukovych’s official website said.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told journalists Yanukovych would visit Moscow at some point in the future and sign a large number of documents. “We are talking about a major agreement here,” Azarov said though he gave no precise details of the outline deal.
Yanukovych faces turmoil in Kiev, where protesters are massed on Independence Square and others occupy City Hall, furious at Yanukovych for walking away last month from a landmark pact on trade and integration with the European Union.
The stand-off is taking a toll on the fragile economy. The central bank has twice been forced to support the hryvnia currency this week and the cost of insuring Ukraine’s debt against default has risen further.
Ukraine’s dwindling currency reserves have particularly sparked alarm among investors. Intervention to support the hryvnia, repayments to the IMF and on treasury bills pushed these reserves further down by nine per cent in November to $18.8 billion, the central bank said yesterday – less than that needed to cover two and a half months of imports.
Former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, one of the opposition leaders, warned of even bigger protests if Yanukovych signed any agreement with Putin on the Russian-led customs union which Moscow wants Ukraine to join.
In Kiev, several hundred demonstrators manned a protest camp on Independence Square as the opposition pressed for the resignation of the government, the release of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the prosecution of the interior minister for being behind an earlier crackdown on protesters.
Tymoshenko’s daughter, Yevgenia, told reporters her mother had ended a 12-day hunger strike, launched in solidarity with the protesters, at the behest “of the square”.
A separate, smaller, group of protesters milled around in the corridors and staircases of City Hall yesterday despite the strongly worded threat from police to eject them.
Opposition leaders, also including world heavweight boxing champion-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko, urged people to turn out for another rally in central Kiev on Sunday.
Klitschko, who seems to be emerging as an agreed opposition candidate to take on Yanukovych in an election in 2015, warned authorities that any attempt to clear the large crowds from Independence Square would lead to a country-wide revolt.
“If the authorities try to disperse people from the Square, then you will see rising up not 100,000 or 500,000 Ukrainians but the whole country,” he declared on his party’s website.