The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has changed policy in relations with Russia, “doing everything to remove the emotional component,” Foreign Minister Pyotr Poroshenko said in an interview with the Kommersant-Ukraina newspaper on Tuesday.

“The amount of notes and public statements rocking the boat of Ukrainian-Russian relations has reduced manifold,” the minister said, adding that “a change in the policy depends not only on the Foreign Ministry”.

The minister noted that Ukrainian and Russian diplomats “brilliantly coped with averting a conflict” connected with the issuing of credentials for Russia’s new Ambassador Mikhail Zurabov. The potential of cooperation between the two countries “is vast with the arrival of Mister Zurabov,” he stressed. “All rumours about a very tough or anti-Ukrainian moods of the new ambassador don’t meet the reality at all. I read in media outlets that his statement in Ukrainian upon the arrival in Borispol consisted of studied phrases. I can testify that it is not so. I spoke with Zurabov several minutes in Ukrainian, and I am very pleased to note that he demonstrated both a 100 percent understanding of the language and a wish to speak Ukrainian,” Poroshenko stressed.

In reply to whether one must expect “angry notes of the Russian Foreign Ministry” in connection with the fact that President Viktor Yuschenko recognized the Ukrainian rebel army as fighter for Ukrainian independence, the minister said “First of all this is an internal affair of Ukraine”. “Inside the country there can be discussions, and different opinions of political and public organizations can exist. The opinion of other countries is only taken into consideration, not more. There are a lot of countries in the world where this or that public activist is a national symbol or a hero, causing sharp disapproval in other countries. Ukraine is not unique in that respect,” the foreign minister added.

Poroshenko said that a dialogue with Russia on demarcation and delimitation of the border has resumed over the past three months. “A new page in Ukrainian-Russian relations, which will begin after the presidential election, gives us grounds for optimism concerning the time framework of the beginning of work on the border issue”.

The minister offers to settle “step-by-step” the problem of the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine’s Crimea. If the sides fail to settle it in package, it must be divided into parts. For example, Poroshenko said, there was a problem with coordinating the procedure of issuing permissions for the travel of hardware. It was heated up by a big number of mutual notes accusing the other side of a non-constructive approach.

There were no talks on the issue for half-a-year. Now the dialogue has resumed, and the sides demonstrate readiness to settle the problem, the minister said. He is confident that the Black Sea Fleet will withdraw from Ukraine in 2017 in line with a basic agreement between the two countries.