MINSK, March 16 - Russia on Wednesday threatened to erect prohibitive trade barriers against Ukrainian goods if Kiev makes progress in talks and signs a free trade accord with the European Union.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that on the other hand Ukraine would “benefit” from joining a trade bloc with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The comment comes as Ukraine has been holding the difficult talks with the EU seeking to sign the free trade agreement before the end of the year.

“If Ukraine creates the free trade with the EU and is forced to retreat on many positions that are sensitive to the Ukrainian economy, it will count on selling these goods on the Russian market,” Putin said at a meeting in Minsk. “But we will not be able to allow this.”

“We will be forced to start building the border or otherwise we will be flooded with these goods,” Putin said.

The comment, which comes amid cooling relations between Russia and Ukraine, shows that Moscow has been resorting to political pressure to force Ukraine reject the trade deal with the EU.

“Speaking honestly, without using a diplomatic language, this is simply a blackmail,” Stepan Kurpil, an opposition lawmaker and member of the European integration committee in Parliament. “Putin, by making statements like this, de-facto claims having the power of veto on independent foreign policy of Ukraine.”

The relations between Ukraine and Russia cooled over the past three months as was reflected in the lack of meetings between President Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Yanukovych and Medvedev spoke by phone on March 10, but failed to iron out trade disagreements and that had further postponed their meeting.

Medvedev and Yanukovych never met this year, highlighting the slow progress in the trade talks.

This is a sharp contrast with the year of 2010 when Medvedev and Yanukovych have met 11 times in the course of 10 months between March 2010 and December 2010.

The call came less than a week after Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, at a meeting with Serhiy Liovochkin, Yanukovych’s chief of staff, in Kiev failed to agree on a timeframe for the next meeting between Medvedev and Yanukovych, citing “problematic issues” in bilateral trade.

Putin argued that on the other hand joining the trade bloc with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the so-called Customs Union, would “benefit” Ukraine.

“This is a sovereign right of Ukraine to join or not to join,” Putin said. “But we believe that the integration processes, in say the Customs Union, would be more solid.”

But Kurpil said such scenario would be dangerous and could even undermine Ukraine’s plans of joining the free trade with the E.U.

“Should Ukraine begin even official talks with Russia over possibility of joining the Customs Union, this would slow down if not undermine any European integration process for Ukraine whatsoever,” Kurpil said. (tl/ez)