Relations of Ukraine and Russia to get worse next year

Relations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation will get worse next year.

Volodymyr Bondarenko, chairman of the board of directors of the Political and Social Studies Institute named after Taras Shevchenko, publicized these results of a poll of experts in the news conference in UNIAN today.

According to him, the experts believe the forecasted worsening of the Ukraine`Russia relations is explained by the fact that successful results of United Russia party at the election to the RF State Duma on December 1 caused “strengthening the influence of President of RF Vladimir Putin”.

V. Bondarenko said that two extremely opposite points of view appeared during the research.

According to his words, one of them belongs to political scientist Volodymyr Polohalo, who noted that “Putin’s party of United Russia is similar to KPSS, and the cult of Putin surpassed the cult of Leonid Brezhnev of stagnation times, that is why the strengthening of Russia will mean a considerable worsening relations with Ukraine”.

V. Bondarenko said that parliament member of Ukraine of the previous convocations Sergiy Pravdenko expressed the brightest point of view, he noted that strengthening power of V. Putin will lead to improving the Russian relations with Ukraine, not now, but only when the direction of Ukraine will change.

Asked by journalists what influence Russia will have on the newly created democratic coalition in Ukraine, V. Bondarenko answered that the influence will be very big, because it is not a secret that more than 50% of industry of Ukraine belongs to Russian companies. “Russia wants not just be present at our energy policy, but already buys the structures, connected with Naftohaz, and sells us gas at any price”, he added.

According to his words, BYUT leader Yulia Tymoshenk, as eventual Prime Minister, will fail to return the gas price to the level, which was during her previous tenure on the post of the Prime Minister, and even to the level, which was during the times of Yuri Yekhanurov as Prime Minister.

According to V. Bondarenko`s point of view, Russia will press Ukraine and will try, in such a way, to influence that the democratic coalition be changed after some time into a coalition of the Party of Regions with communists, which it likes more.

According to his words, in addition to the “gas” influence Russia, will also use that of “oil”. He said: “It is known that 5 out of 6 oil refineries in Ukraine belong to Russia.”