Ukraine parliament OKs pivotal EU pact
Ukraine's parliament moved Tuesday to resolve months of crisis by ratifying an agreement strengthening ties with the European Union while loosening some controls over its rebellious eastern regions.
Parliament's actions will lower trade tariffs between Europe and Ukraine, require Ukrainian goods to meet European regulatory standards and force the government to begin political and economic reforms.
After parliament ratified the measure, lawmakers leapt to their feet to applaud and sing the Ukrainian national anthem. A live broadcast of the session was beamed to the European Parliament.
A dispute over the agreement triggered last year's street protests when then-president Viktor Yanukovych shelved the deal, which Russia also opposed. After protests spiraled into violence, Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fled the country and was formally ousted.
The current president, Petro Poroshenko, called Tuesday's vote a "first but very decisive step" toward bringing Ukraine fully into the European Union.
He said Ukrainians who died in protests and the eastern fighting "have died not only for their motherland. They gave up their lives for us to take a dignified place among the European family."
Earlier Tuesday, the parliament also approved laws granting temporary self-rule to pro-Russian regions in the eastern part of Ukraine, as well as amnesty for many of those involved in the fighting. The lawmakers took that action behind closed doors, in contrast to the fanfare of the vote on the European agreement.
One of the laws calls for three years of self-rule in parts of eastern Ukraine and for local elections in November.
Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the rebels in the Donetsk region, told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency that the separatist leadership would study the measures.
The U.S. State Department congratulated the Ukrainian lawmakers.
"By forging ahead with this agreement in the face of great challenges, Ukraine's leaders have carried out the will of the Ukrainian people, who demonstrated their overwhelming support for further integration with Europe last winter and with their votes in the May 25 presidential elections," said Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman at the State Department.
Harf also applauded the passage of the amnesty and self-rule measures, saying they were "two important commitments Ukraine made in the Minsk cease-fire agreement on Sept. 5." She urged Russia and the separatists to begin immediate and full implementation of the cease-fire agreement.
More than 3,000 people have died in fighting between Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists.
Russia has voiced objections to the EU deal because it weakens Ukraine's economic bonds to Russia and effectively took it out of any Russian-based common market.
The Russian media has claimed a measure of victory for the Kremlin over the issue because newly negotiated terms of the EU free trade agreement will delay its implementation until the end of 2015, keeping in place Ukraine's free trade agreement within the Commonwealth of Independent States, made up of many former Soviet Republics.
Russia has warned it would regard any "'creeping" implementation of the Ukraine-EU deal beforehand to be a violation of the CIS preferential trade pact, giving Moscow the right to cancel it outright with Ukraine, the state-run Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reports.
Contributing: The Associated Press