In its materials “Borysfen” has already covered the questions, connected with activation of neo-imperial policy of Russia at post-Soviet territories, and Russia’s intention to realize its idea of creation of the Eurasian Union and making Ukraine join it. This issue is becoming very actual because a number of Ukrainian political forces are initiating the idea of Ukraine-wide referendum on European or Eurasian choice of our state.
Within the framework of the mentioned above goal, the Russian Federation and its Ukrainian apologists are taking new measures for making our country move Eastward, namely: joining the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan as the first step to the Eurasian Union. In particular, if before now these ideas were being spread only by Russian Medias, now they occupy more and more pages of Ukrainian Media, trying to dominate in the information space of Ukraine. What consequences would be of Ukraine’s joining the Customs Union of Russia and its current partners? The sequences would be quite contradictory (to put it mildly), and if we take into consideration the experience of the previous years of co-existence within the framework of one common state, - those sequences would be quite promising where it comes to economic negativity.
Firstly, the leading branches of the Ukrainian economy will inevitably go to Russian oligarch circles, whose financial capabilities are much higher. Of course, that will mean an outflow of capital from Ukraine, as investments will be made into the development of the Russian, not Ukrainian, economy. Besides, gaining the ownership of businesses of Ukrainian economy, will allow Russia to manipulate with the money in its own interests, including leading them to artificial bankruptcy, closing those businesses which compete with Russian ones, etc. In particular, this is confirmed by the situation around the Ukrainian oil producing industry. Thus, after having bought Ukrainian oil refinery plants in the middle of 1990s, Russia has actually stopped investing into their modernization. At the same time, it has been developing its own oil refining industry. This is the reason why now by the quality of production, Ukrainian oil refineries are lagging behind both, Western and Russian ones. This makes Ukrainian oil products uncompetitive even at their domestic market.
A similar situation is in the ship-building industry of Ukraine, when privatized by Russia Ukrainian enterprises have been shut down.
In general the mentioned above facts make stronger the doubts about the prospects of getting Russian investments in Ukrainian economy.
Secondly, Russia will significantly expand its abilities for realization of its strategic goal of establishing control over the gas-transporting system (GTS). This will mean Ukraine’s losing its energy independence, and thus, its political independence too. Thus, control over the Ukrainian GTS will allow the Russian side to deprive Ukraine of the right to determine the Russian gas transit tariffs (as one of most effective tools of influence on Russian price policy in the gas industry regarding Ukraine), will enable Russia’s manipulating gas supplies within Ukraine (not letting Ukrainian metallurgic and chemical plants that compete with Russian ones to work normally, included). Russia will also wind up the Ukrainian gas industry and will block our state’s access to alternative sources of gas (by blocking Ukraine’s ability to use its domestic pipe line networks). At this, declaring its being interested in obtaining the Ukrainian GTS, Russia is not giving up construction of alternative gas transporting systems, the gas pipeline “Southern Stream”, for one.
Similar problems have already covered Belarus - after the Russian “Gazprom”'s having obtained the control packet of shares of the Belarusian “Beltransgaz” company. At this Belarus’ political losses have not been compensated by any real economic preferences on the part of Russia, which continues the construction of the “Northern Stream” gas pipeline bypassing Belarusian territory, and does not care about Belarus’ problems in the energy sphere, in particular, about permanent Belarusian problems with Russian oil supplies.
Thus, in February of 2013, Russia and Belarus yet again could not achieve an agreement on such supplies for 2013. Besides, Russia’s lowering the gas price for Belarus is exclusively temporary and cannot be considered as a long term factor of supporting the growth of Belarusian economy.
Raising its domestic gas prices, Russia is planning to raise prices for Belarus too.
Similar problems can be observed in the relations between Kazakhstan and Russia, which now has been de facto a monopolist in refining Kazakhstan’s oil, and actually sets the price for its import.
Thirdly, Ukraine will completely lose an opportunity to create a Free Trade Area with the EU, and therefore, - prospects of its European integration, and will fall under the over-all influence of the Russian Federation. This will also mean losing by Ukraine its real (unlike Russia) European investors, as well as its access to the European market (which is ten times larger than Russian one) and to the advanced Western technologies. This way, Ukraine will actually give up a normal, European way of its development, unlike its neighbors, Poland and Baltic countries.
Fourthly, Ukrainian industrialists, and Ukraine in the whole, will need significant (at the level of several billion US dollars) financial expenditures to bring Ukrainian goods to the standards of the Customs Union, that are based on the relevant rules and regulations of Russia. At this the transfer to such standards does not guarantee Ukraine’s avoidance of regular trade claims from the Russian Federation. To this testifies the fact of Russia’s having such claims to Belarus and Kazakhstan whenever some disagreements get sharper. For example, the latest such case – closing of Russian market for some of Kazakhstan’s products took place at the end of 2012-beginning of 2013, when Russia and Kazakhstan could not agree on the conditions of Russia’s using Baykonur.
Fifthly, our state will inevitably feel additional economic problems, connected on the one hand, with opening of Ukrainian borders for Russian goods, and on the other hand - from stronger barriers before production from other countries. As a result, the domestic prices in Ukraine will grow at the unchangeable level of wages, as well as Ukrainian enterprises will keep shutting down due to the increasing Russian competition, which will lead to increasing of the level of unemployment in our country.
We should also take into consideration a possibility of using speculative trade schemes by Russian business (in particular, reselling Ukrainian production at the Russian market under the guise of its processing in Russia, as it did happen in Kazakhstan), which will increase inflation in Ukraine.
At this, no matter how positive sound the promises, even the Russian side itself admits that in reality all this positive wont start happening sooner than in five years after Ukraine’s joining the CU. In their turn, as the experience of Belarus and Kazakhstan shows, negative consequences can be seen immediately after the country’s joining the Customs Union.
By the way, recently in some business circles of Kazakhstan more and more often has been raised the question whether the country’s further being in the CU with Russia and Belarus is reasonable. So far such moods are being held back by the President of Kazakhstan N.Nazarbayev, who traditionally maintains friendly relations with Russia, supports its integration initiatives, explaining it all by traditions of common historic past.
But if the power in Kazakhstan changes (which will happen in the nearest future due to natural processes of appearing of a new generation of politicians), the country may take an absolutely different position in its attitude to the Russian Federation.
This is confirmed by Kazakhstan’s active realization of projects of its independent going out onto the world markets of energy carriers, as well as by the large scale involvement of Western and Chinese investments, which are times higher than Russian ones.
The leadership of Belarus is also looking for an alternative to economic relations with Russia. In particular, despite its membership in the CU, Belarus is activating its trade-economic relations with China, UAE, and countries of Latin America. Besides, at the background of the latest problems with Russia, connected with oil issues being unregulated, Belarus shows its readiness for improving its relations with the USA and EU.
All this undermines the unity of the Customs Union, decreases the effectiveness of its work, complicates its future. The mentioned above circumstances, and not some subjective likes and dislikes, should be taken into consideration at choosing the direction of Ukraine’s development
