Discussions in parliament in Kiev for the Russian fleet in Crimea
Posted on April 27, 2010 by cesa
KIEV – Deputies inside their supporters out: the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the basis of Sevastopol has unleashed a real battle to Parliament in Kiev, which has ratified only after a clash traits also comedians, with launches eggs and tear.
The agreement – called in Kharkiv on April 21 last year by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich – has allowed the Russian Black Sea Fleet to remain at anchor in the Crimea until 2042, with the possibility to extend even further five years. In return, the Russians have given discounts on gas supplies to Ukraine that within ten years amounted to approximately $ 40 billion.
A heavy commitment to the Russian budget, Vladimir Putin, who was in Kiev to meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, said that no military base in the world cost so much, and now in his typical colorful language said that the money he would also “eat Yanukovich. The naval base in Crimea, it admitted, it is crucial to Russia from the strategic point of view: the arrival of the pro-Russian Yanukovich to power, Moscow wasted no time to hang up the most important of the former Soviet republics.
For the opposition, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the pact with Russia instead tantamount to treason. The presence of foreign military bases on national territory the Ukrainian Constitution is rather ambiguous, but the predecessor of Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko, had clarified that the expiration of the agreements into force in 2017, the Russians would have to abandon the base.
“Today is a black page in the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Parliament,” Yulia Tymoshenko told reporters. To protect against a hail of eggs, the speaker Volodymyr Litvyn had to be ruled by two umbrellas to protect workers, while opposition MPs covered the classroom with a huge blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and threw tear gas.
Undeterred Litvyn did carry the vote, and the coalition that supports Mr Yanukovich has managed to gather ten more votes – 236 – than necessary to ratify the agreement with Moscow. Where the Duma is much more tame: the agreement on the fleet – despite the load on the national budget – has risen in parallel with Kiev, but unanimously (410 to zero).
