Canada’s prime minister on visit to Ukraine

Before the deal was signed, Trudeau sat down with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who thanked Canada for its support over the years.

Canada is ready to support Ukraine in holding the important reforms, Groysman said, commenting on the results of negotiations with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

President Petro Poroshenko told a news conference at the end of the talks in Kiev on Monday that the free trade deal will do away with “99 percent of barriers within the next seven years in trade” between the two countries.

Since the beginning of the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that erupted in April 2014, Kiev has repeatedly accused Moscow of supporting Donbass separatists, but Russian authorities have denied these allegations.

That’s when the current mission near the western city of Lviv is set to expire.

And Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of worldwide trade, who also signed the agreement along with Stepan Kubiv, Ukraine’s first vice prime minister and minister of economic development and trade, added: “Canada and Ukraine know that trade is essential to jobs and growth”.

“It is obvious for everyone that Kiev does not want and is not going to implement the Minsk agreements”, the head of President Vladimir Putin’s administration Sergei Ivanov said last month in a television interview.

Trudeau reiterated Canada’s support for the Kiev government’s fight against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine but stopped short of pledging weapons supplies that Poroshenko is anxious to get from the West.

“With that situation, it is vitally important for us that Russian Federation meet the security criteria for launching the political process”. Ukrainian officials are also hoping it will spark an influx of Canadian investment for their country’s struggling economy. “Not just because Ukraine is a good friend to Canada, but because of the values and principles that we stand for as a country”. They laid a bouquet of flowers at a memorial to tens of thousands of Ukrainians, many of them Jews, killed by the Nazis in Kyiv during he Second World War.