Kiev: Lawmakers on Thursday annulled five crucial security agreements with Moscow that allowed Russia to transport troops to a separatist region of Moldova and purchase weapons only produced in Ukraine.
The deals were effectively suspended with the onset of Ukraine`s pro-Russian uprising in the industrial east 13 months ago that Kiev blames the Kremlin for fomenting.
But the Verkhovna Rada parliament`s decision means that legislative support from Ukraine`s dominant nationalist and pro-European parties would be required before such cooperation could resume once the separatist conflict is resolved.
It also underscores how little a new February east Ukrainian truce deal has done to rebuild trust between Moscow and Kiev.
"I know of no other country that continues to be friends with a neighbour that kills your people," prominent pro-EU deputy Mustafa Nayyem wrote on Facebook.
"And only recently I learned that we still have international agreements with Russia concerning military and technological cooperation!"
The five laws include a strategic agreement allowing Moscow to send peacekeeping forces across Ukraine to Moldova`s Russian-speaking Transdniester region.
A top Ukrainian state security official told AFP that the these transports` abrupt interruption had caught Moscow off guard when they first went into effect about a year ago.
But the same official said Moscow has since found new avenues by which to supply troops to the self-declared state.
A second politically-charged agreement required both Russia and Ukraine to protect each others` state secrets. It was initially approved with the arrival of one-time spy Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in 2000.
Another law covered basic Russian military transports across Ukraine and a fourth concerned mutual arms purchases.
Ukraine inherited several huge Soviet-era arms manufacturing sites that formed the backbone of Russia`s armed forces.
The final law covered intelligence sharing between the two sides.
