Ukrainian government considers measures on Russian customs delays

Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov created on August 15 a working group to address the recent delays in Ukrainian goods being exported to the Russian Federation, said Valeriy Muntiyan, Ukraine’s ombudsman for cooperation with Russia and CIS member-states. The Ministry of Economic Development is currently monitoring the situation with Ukrainian exports and is actively working with the Russian government to address the problems, he said, as reported by the Ukrayinska Pravda news site. The Ukrainian government hasn’t received documents that confirm Ukrainian exporters violated the laws of Russia or the Customs Union, he said, adding that there are not enough grounds to claim that the current trouble is a consequence of restrictive measures. “Truly, there are general Russian risks at the stage of registering declaration, as well as a certain list of enterprises, but we can’t say today that it has a massive nature and that there are affirming documents in which Ukrainian enterprises or goods have been included,” Muntiyan said.

Earlier in the day, Azarov acknowledged to the press a link between the customs trouble and Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation. “Currently, there are certain complications related to, firstly, as we believe, creating the structure and formalization of the Customs Union. We have differences in approaches,” he said. He said the problem will be resolved by reaching an agreement on their positions and called upon Ukraine’s mass media not to inflame and exaggerate the situation. “Currently our mass media are exaggerating this allegedly existing conflict. Yes, there are problems, but they’re not worth artificially inflaming and exaggerating.”

The Ukrainian government will raise its concerns about the ability of exported goods to pass through customs at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Commission on August 16, said Viktor Suslov, Ukraine’s representative to the commission. “Of course, I think a discussion needs to be held on the situation, at least for the reason that Ukraine still hasn’t received information from the Russian side officially, at the government level, about the nature of the decisions and the concerns about imports,” Suslov said, as reported by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Zenon Zawada: The available evidence suggests that the stricter controls at the Russian-Ukrainian border have a systemic and massive nature. Ukraine’s Obolon beverage company announced that it has halted its shipments to Russia because its goods were being held at the border. Ukrainian wine maker Inkerman also reported its delivery trucks being stopped at the Russian border. These are merely the latest in reported delays and stoppages by Russian customs officials at Russian-Ukrainian border.

We think this conflict has the potential to continue for several months. To resolve it, the Russian government will want nothing short of their Ukrainian counterparts abstaining from signing the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement in November and pledging allegiance to the Customs Union, the precursor to the Eurasian Union to be launched in 2015.

Meanwhile, we are slightly surprised by the lack of a immediate reaction and measures from the Ukrainian government. Instead of protecting Ukrainian suppliers to Russia, or at least pretending to, Azarov was trying to “explain” to the mass media the possible reasons behind the actions of the Russian Customs Service.