“We want the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the G-7 countries, and the European Union to meet their obligations undertaken in 1995. Simultaneously, we do not want to be pushed into a corner,” President Leonid Kuchma stressed on December 14 in Kharkiv. By the results of the Economy Forum of Ukraine and Russia a contract was signed on cooperation in completing the Khmelnytsky and Rivne Nuclear Power Plant energy blocks. It is easy to guess how this contract will be taken in the West. Only two weeks ago Western Europe was rather astonished with Ukraine’s refusal to sign a document with the EBRD on granting a $200,000,000 loan to complete the two reactors. The Ukrainian leader said then that the Bank’s conditions were “unacceptable” to Ukraine. Instead Kyiv chose Russia as its creditor. However, later Kuchma added that Ukraine does not rule out negotiations with the EBRD. He repeated this at the forum.
Rapprochement in Ukrainian-Russian relations became especially visible last year. Signing the treaty on common completing the nuclear reactors is just one of the illustrations for increased activity in the mutual relations. Another one is the Russian-Ukrainian Forum itself, which was held in Kharkiv on December 13-14. About three hundred businessmen arrived at the Kharkiv meeting from Russia (many of them representing big companies), and as many Ukrainian entrepreneurs. They say that the organizers even had problems with accommodations, since Kharkiv cannot boast such high-class hotel capacity to suitably house such august guests. It seems that the precise number of participants was unknown until the last moment. President of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists Arkady Volsky said that he had received over a thousand applications and accordingly had to turn down seven hundred of them. He also added that this forum was prepared more thoroughly and attentively than ever.
The forum’s principal attraction was the arrival of Presidents Putin and Kuchma in Kharkiv. This time there were no sensational declarations. Mr. Kuchma spoke mainly on the perspectives and shortcomings of bilateral relations. He mentioned that commodity turnover between our countries, though having increased, amounts only 60% of its 1996 level, the Odesa-Brody pipeline that will allow Russia to supply oil to the Western Europe bypassing the Bosporus, and the need to create joint financial industrial groups. Mr. Putin, in his turn, marked that the borders between the two countries have become more and more transparent for investments flow. Ukraine occupies the second place in Russia’s volume of Russian trade after Germany. In the words of the Russian president, Moscow needs Ukraine as an “economically strong partner.” Putin also believes that Ukraine and Russia “have already created a common market.” He is positive that the two countries should join the World Trade Organization together.
