On March 12, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a draft law proposing to terminate the Kharkiv agreements and notify Russia about it in the manner prescribed by them.
On March 12, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a draft law on the termination of the Kharkiv agreements. Corresponding document No. 0095 published on the website of the parliament.
The authors of the document are the people’s deputies from the Servant of the People party, members of the committee on the organization of state power, local self-government, regional development and urban planning, Alexander Aliksiychuk and Oleg Dunda.
The draft law proposes to terminate the Kharkiv agreements and notify Russia of this in the manner prescribed by them. The government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must inform Russia about the denunciation of the agreement.
On March 16, the bill was submitted for consideration to the Committee on Foreign Policy and Interparliamentary Cooperation of the Rada.
The explanatory note to the bill notes that The Kharkiv agreements were signed under the pretext that Ukraine received a discount on gas, but in practice no discounts were provided.
“Russia at first artificially created and accumulated Ukraine’s debt to it for the supply of natural gas, and then, to repay it, including by allegedly granting a discount, actually deployed its fleet on the territory of Ukraine free of charge,” the document says.
The text of the note also states that as a result of the Kharkiv agreements in 2014, “the military personnel of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in cooperation with other Russian units, carried out the military occupation and subsequent annexation of Crimea, which led to dire consequences in the form of violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
March 11 National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instructed the Security Service of Ukraine to check the circumstances ratification of the Kharkiv agreements. SBU opened criminal proceedings under the article on treason.
According to Art. 80 of the Constitution of Ukraine, people’s deputies are not legally responsible for the results of voting or statements in parliament and its bodies, with the exception of liability for insult or defamation. The former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Stanislav Shevchuk, after the announcement of the NSDC’s decision on the Kharkiv agreements, recalled this norm. He explained that if this or that parliamentarian, for example, was guided by the opinion that “a discount on gas is good for the people of Ukraine,” then because of this, criminal liability for him cannot come.
The Kharkiv agreements in 2010 were signed by the then presidents of Ukraine and Russia, Viktor Yanukovych and Dmitry Medvedev. The ratification of the Kharkiv agreements on April 27, 2010 was accompanied by a fight in parliament, smoke bombs and throwing eggs at the presidium. In January 2021, to Yanukovych, the State Bureau of Investigations due to the signing of the document reported suspicion of treason.
According to the agreements, Ukraine received a 30% discount on gas in exchange for prolonging the stay of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine from 2017 to 2042. As the RRB explained, there was virtually no discount, since Russia had doubled the price of gas a year earlier. By signing the agreement under the pretext of obtaining a discount on gas, Yanukovych artificially created the prerequisites for an increase in the number of Russian troops and the conditions for their stay in Ukraine, the Office of the Prosecutor General emphasized.
Russia occupied Crimea after illegal referendum on March 16, 2014… The annexation of the peninsula to the Russian Federation is not recognized by Ukraine and most countries of the world. At the moment, there is a checkpoint regime between mainland Ukraine and Crimea, and Kiev de facto does not control the peninsula.
After the occupation of Crimea, the Russian Federation denounced the Kharkov agreements.
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