KIEV, April 9 – Joining a Russia-led trade bloc would reduce Ukraine’s independence and should be avoided at all costs, Arseniy Yatseniuk, a former parliamentary speaker and now an opposition leader, said Friday.

Russia has offered Ukraine annual savings of up to $8 billion on lower natural gas prices as Moscow has stepped up pressure seeking to derail Kiev’s trade and political negotiations with Brussels.

The bloc, known as the Customs Union, also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan, and will top the agenda of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s April 12 trip to Kiev.

“The Customs Union is when Ukraine is ridding itself of the right to independently define its trade policy,” Yatseniuk said in comments at Shuster Live television talk show. “This means Ukraine would be transferring its foreign trade levers to another country. The other country, of course, will be Russia.”

President Viktor Yanukovych, in an annual address to Parliament on Thursday, said that Ukraine’s primary goal is to create by the end of the year a free-trade regime with the European Union.

Cooperation with Russia, however, would also increase, but will fall short of joining the Customs Union as a full-fledged member state, Yanukovych said.

The developments come as Moscow has come on a diplomatic offensive seeking to discourage Kiev from joining the free-trade agreement with Brussels, and encouraging it to join the Customs Union instead.

Valery Golubev, deputy CEO of Russian energy giant Gazprom, said Thursday that Ukraine would be able to save up to $8 billion annually on lower natural gas prices if it joins the Customs Union.

Meanwhile, Moscow has suggested Kiev to quit the World Trade Organization, or WTO, and had agreed to compensate economically all losses and penalties that the move may incur, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper reported Saturday citing an unidentified source in the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine would be able to re-join the WTO on “better terms” later when Russia completes its negotiations to join the organization, according to the source.

The report suggests that Moscow has been making a far more serious and more controversial proposal for Kiev than has been earlier thought.

But Valeriy Piatnytskiy, Ukraine’s chief negotiator on foreign trade, said that quitting the WTO may be a serious blow to Ukrainian national interests.

“If we quit the WTO, the road back would not be easy,” Piatnytskiy told the newspaper. “What may happen is that Russia would join the WTO, and other countries - the members of the Customs Union – would keep unsuccessfully negotiating the WTO membership.” (tl/ez)