The Treaty of friendship between Russia and the Ukraine was in the past, on both sides of a controversial issue. Now is a ripped thread in Kiev of patience. The 2019 expiring contract is not renewed.
Protest against annexation of Crimea in Moscow, March 2014
Since the 27. February 2014, as with the occupation of the regional Parliament in Simferopol by Pro-Russian, the Russian annexation of the Crimea Armed for the first Time became visible, for Ukraine, the question of whether you should get out of the important Treaty of friendship with Russia. In article 2 of this 1999 Treaty came into force, both sides pledged to respect their territorial integrity and the existing borders. With the annexation of the Crimea and the covert war in the Eastern coalfields of the Donbass, Russia has violated the Treaty, from Kiev’s point of view, coarse. However, what many in the Ukraine for a long overdue, is happening only now: The Parliament in Kiev voted on Thursday for the bill by the President Petro Poroshenko to leave the friendship Treaty, originally designed again automatically for a further ten years. So he is on 1. April 2019 expiry.
In the months before the Ukraine informed both Russia and the UN about their intention to not renew the Treaty of friendship. That Kiev has only four years after the annexation of Crimea decided, explains the government’s legal arguments. You have referred to in various actions against Russia before international courts on the contract. In addition, you have first feared, the exit would unleash Russia”,” Kiev professional circles. Now, Ukraine no longer seems to have such Worries. However, it was decided against a formal exit, but for a non-renewal. From Kiev’s point of view, the peoples was legally simpler way.
A cornerstone of the relationship
The Treaty on friendship, cooperation and partnership is also called the “Great contract,” because he laid the basis for relations with former Soviet republics, and ended the year-long tensions between Moscow and Kiev. In a sense, Russia, the Ukraine recognized finally as an independent state, including the Crimea.
A picture from calmer days: in 1997, the Ukraine allowed the stationing of the Russian black sea fleet in Crimea
31. May 1997, the contract was signed in Kiev by the then presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma, that he resigned, but only after ratification by parliaments into force in April 1999. That such a contract only came into force six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was mainly due to the dispute over the black sea fleet. Only three days before the signing of the friendship agreement, Russia and Ukraine signed a Treaty on the Status and distribution of the black sea fleet, Russia has the lion’s share of the ships received. The Ukraine allowed the stationing of the fleet in Crimea until 2017. Only then is the path to the Treaty of friendship was free.
Brittle Friendship
Despite its importance, the Treaty of friendship usually contains only General statements, such as the commitment to a “strategic partnership”. Critics complain that it contains no mechanisms for conflict resolution. In the following years, the Russian-Ukrainian friendship. They crumbled in earnest in the autumn of 2003 because of a dispute with the Ukrainian island of Tuzla in the Kerch Strait, when Russia tried to connect to it through the construction of a dam with the mainland. Then the gas crisis came in 2006, when Moscow Kiev turned in for the first Time, the faucet, even though the contract prohibits economic pressure explicitly. Both times protested Kiev loudly against the Russian measures, however, he kept to the contract.
Gas was often subject to dispute between Russia and Ukraine
In the summer of 2008, the Treaty of friendship of the Russian side on the Brink. The lower house of the Russian Parliament, the state Duma, suggested to the then President Dmitry Medvedev, on a contract exit thinking, should prepare for Ukraine’s NATO membership. At the time of the NATO-summit in Bucharest Ukraine the prospect of accession in the distant future in view. But Kiev is pursuing a so-called Membership Action Plan (MAP), a kind of pre-accession programme, was rejected. Yuri Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, proposed to let the contract with Kiev to expire, and then the Crimea belonging to the Ukraine is out of the question. The Kremlin then decided against it.
There are no consequences for border issues?
What consequences could have the end of the friendship Treaty in 2019, is still unclear. The border issue is likely to be from Kiev’s point of view, unaffected. Because there is a separate contract about border between Russia and the Ukraine from the year 2003. This agreement remains in place.