MOSCOW, September 8 (RIA Novosti) – The free trade deal between the EU and the US that is presently being negotiated will “kill the European economy” and taking that into account, Brussels has tried to grab the Ukrainian market, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Globalization Studies said Monday.
“They got a little too afraid, they've pressed a little too hard, and destroyed the Ukrainian state on the way just because they were in a rush, they were upset with [Vladimir] Putin preferring democracy to his personal dependence on the West by recognizing the referendum in Crimea, and so on, and they began their revenge,” Mikhail Delyagin said at the World Russia Forum 2014.
The EU and the US hope to conclude talks on a free trade deal, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), by the end of the year.
Supporters praise it as a landmark economic pact that will forge a tariff-free market for 800 million consumers stretching from California to Romania. But critics of the TTIP say it undermines labor rights, harms the environment and threatens relations between the West and Russia and China.
In late June, Ukraine and the 28-member European bloc inked an association agreement that stipulated the creation of a free-trade zone, three months after the parties signed into force a package of political provisions back on March 21.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow did not object to closer ties between Kiev and Brussels, but warned that Russia would be forced to protect its economic interests against an inflow of cheap European goods via Ukraine.
