KIEV, Oct. 19 – Ukraine has failed in its attempt to get Russia to lift key commodity restrictions in effect for the past 15 years.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on Russian television Wednesday that the free trade agreement signed between Russia, Ukraine and six other nations of the former Soviet Union on Tuesday excludes crucial commodities such as oil, gas and sugar.

“For us the most sensitive is sugar,” Azarov said in a comment made in St. Petersburg and carried by state television Pershiy. “It was always on the list of restrictions, but we have agreed for the first time that we will lift the restrictions in a certain amount of time.”

Russia has also promised at some point to lift the restrictions on trade with oil and gas, Azarov said without providing any timeframes for the plans.

“We are free to trade everything, except for selling freely to Russia our sugar – the commodity that we have to sell,” Oleh Medvedev, a political consultant for former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, wrote in his blog on Wednesday. “And we’re also not free to buy oil and gas – something that we need to buy.”

The remaining restrictions in the free trade agreement with Russia casts doubt on whether Ukraine has been politically ready to sign it.

The signing came immediately after Ukraine had suffered a setback in relations with the European Union, which had postponed indefinitely a meeting with Yanukovych in Brussels earlier this week following criticism over democracy in the country.

The move may jeopardize the free trade agreement and political association deal that Ukraine has been seeking to sign with the EU before the end of the year.

Ukraine has earlier this year refused to joint the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, a deep level of integration that would derail free trade talks with the European Union.

Still, there were growing concerns among opposition lawmakers on Wednesday that the latest signing of the agreement with Russia signals re-orienting of Ukraine’s foreign policy away from closer integration with the EU.

“The free trade agreement with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan – this is Asia and the new Russian empire,” Oleksandr Hudyma, a lawmaker from opposition Batkivshchyna group, told Radio Liberty. “This is a signal not in favor of Ukraine’s European choice.”

Viktor Yushchenko, a former president who conducted decisively pro-Western policy in 2005-2009, on Wednesday said the free trade agreement with Russia was likely to shut down Ukraine’s European integration.

He drew parallel with Yanukovych’s signing of an agreement with Russia in Kharkiv in April 2010 to extend stationing of its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol by 25 years through 2042. He said the Kharkiv agreement, because it allows Russian troops on its territory, shut the door for Ukraine to joining NATO.

“Just like Kharkiv agreement had shut our integration in the area of security, the yesterday’s agreement shuts down our integration with the EU in the area of trade,” Yushchenko said.

“There cannot be two free trade agreements on the same territory,” Yushchenko said. “It’s just not happening.” (tl/ez)