gor Burakovsky
The way of Russia to the WTO: lessons for UkraineI

Russia as well as Ukraine announced its decision to join WTO in 1993. These talks with WTO members were announced as successful several times but actual joining WTO was always postponed so far. Its important that these processes of joining WTO was different in Russia and Ukraine: Russia from the very beginning considered joining WTO as some kind of national economy project while in Ukraine this process was announces as a political priority but in reality this slowed it down because Ukrainian politicians are tremendously divided if not antagonized and there is no consensus among them about anything including joining WTO
The quintessence of these accusations was articulated by the member of Russian Parliament Sergey Glazev in his open letter to Julia Timoshenko 23 of May 2005, prime minister of Ukraine then. As Glazev wrote "Ukrainian representatives accepted conditions of their overseas partners on WTO talks on all positions vital to Russian and Ukrainian economy, where cooperation between these two countries was essential, thus betraying national economic interests both of Russia and Ukraine." This thesis was reproduced by Ukrainian politicians opposed to Ukraine joining WTO word for word many many times...more.