Volodymyr Groysman at the meeting with prime ministers of the Baltic countries: Our States must deepen cooperation and unite in addressing security and economic threats

Ukraine and the Baltic States – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, like no other countries have similar feelings and suffer from similar external political, military and economic threats, in particular from the Russian Federation and this is why our countries must unite in combating these threats and building of an effective European integration policy. This was stated by Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman during a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia by Jüri Ratas, Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia Māris Kučinskis and Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania Saulius Skvernelis.

"Back in 1999, there was first voiced an initiative to intensify the Baltic-Black Sea cooperation, and then no one could have thought that after so many years we would have loads of important and urgent topics for our countries. Today we are demonstrating the level of trust and partnership that are the key to our further collaboration. Apparently, we, like nobody else, feel a threat to our sovereignty from the Russian Federation and the agenda of our talks is how to counteract the aggression of Russia violating European law and the sovereignty of the States in the XXI century", stressed Volodymyr Groysman.

He told about escalation of Russia's aggression in Ukraine, and that accord on ceasefire regime and abiding by the Minsk agreements are ignored by the Russian Federation. Only in the first days of April, said Volodymyr Groysman, the Ukrainian positions have been shelled more than 250 times, there grow casualties among Ukrainian soldiers. "Russia continues arms supplies to terrorists, and we must make them stop supplying weapons", urged the Head of Ukrainian Government.

For their part, heads of government of the Baltic States stressed that they fully share the position of Ukraine not to recognize annexation of Crimea and express readiness to continue and strengthen the policy of sanctions against Russia, because the sanctions had been imposed as punishment for Russian military invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory. Hence, the lifting of the sanctions, assured the heads of government, is viewed possible only after changing the rhetoric and actions of the Russian Federation.