Hawkish: US Vice President Dick Cheney delivers a statement in Tbilisi on Thursday. (AFP)

KIEV: US Vice President Dick Cheney urged Ukraine’s leaders yesterday to unite against the “threat” posed by Russia at separate talks with the country’s deeply divided president and prime minister.

Ending a tour of US allies in the former Soviet Union, Cheney said the best way to prevent an “invasion” of the kind unleashed against Georgia by Russia last month was for the rivals to overcome their differences and unite.

“We believe in the right of men and women to live without the threat of tyranny, economic blackmail or military invasion or intimidation,” Cheney said after meeting President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

“Ukraine’s best hope to overcome these threats is to be united — united domestically first and foremost and united with other democracies,” he said.

His message came as a top Ukrainian minister warned Russia was stirring separatist feeling in Ukraine by distributing Russian passports.

Using similar language as he did on previous stops on his tour of ex-Soviet republics Azerbaijan and Georgia, Cheney vowed Washington’s “deep and abiding interest” in Ukraine’s “well-being and security.”

Cheney met Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, whose enthusiasm for NATO has cooled since she signed a letter in January calling for a Membership Action Plan (MAP) — the first step toward joining the alliance.

Cheney’s visit to Ukraine came as the flagship of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet delivered aid to the Georgian port of Poti, close to where Russian forces are based, saying “other countries call their citizens home in crisis periods.”

Meanwhile, Russia accused the US yesterday of encouraging Georgian aggression by supporting Tbilisi’s NATO membership bid. Cheney told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Thursday Washington was fully committed to Tbilisi’s bid to join the alliance.

“The new promises to Tbilisi relating to the speedy membership of NATO simply strengthen the Saakashvili regime’s dangerous feeling of impunity and encourages its dangerous ambitions,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters.

Ukrainian President said NATO membership was vital to protect his country, which shares a long land border with Russia and has a large Russian-speaking population.

Uncertainty over relations with the West hit Russian financial market yesterday. Shares plunged over 7 percent to their lowest in more than two years.

Ukrainian President Yushchenko has stepped up calls for swift NATO membership following the conflict in South Ossetia, but his political rivals are either cool or openly oppose an alliance that giant neighbor Russia sees as hostile.