The unexpected last-minute decision of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych to reject the controversial trade deal with the European Union should be a challenge to both the EU and Russia to respect the complexities of this former Soviet country, and for Ukraine itself to demonstrate its confidence as an independent sovereign state and refuse to cave in to the bribes or threats from either Moscow or Brussels.
The collapse of the Ukraine-EU agreement has resulted in thousands taking to the streets in protest in the capital Kiev in the biggest demonstrations since the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004. And this is a particular disappointment to Pat Cox, former Irish MEP and European Parliament President, who has been working almost night and day on behalf of the EU to try and clinch the historic agreement with Ukraine.
On behalf of the current President of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, and with the backing of the European Council, Cox had been working with former Polish President Alexander Kwasniesky to achieve an agreement with Ukraine. For the past 18 months, Cox and Kwasniesky have carried out 27 missions to Ukraine and have spent 75 days in the country besides meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg.
President Yanukovych finally abandoned an EU agreement in favour of closer ties with Russia despite the thousands of protesters streaming onto the streets to back the deal. But Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council who described the proposed agreement as the “most ambitious” ever offered to a non-member state, said the offer “is still on the table”.
I was an election observer in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, based in Kiev –where a tented village was established, with people coming from across the country – and observing the voting in Odessa on the Black Sea coast. I was in Independence Square in Kiev when Yulia Tymoshenko addressed thousands on the eve of the ballot and her impressive oratory was received with rapturous applause. My first visit to Ukraine, though, was in the 1960s when it was part of the former Soviet Union.
Over the years I have become aware of the divisions and complexities of this country of 46 million, with the eastern section being Russian speaking and looking to Moscow and the western areas looking to the countries of the EU and to Brussels. President Yanukovych was born in 1950 in eastern Ukraine; he speaks Russian, and was considered the Moscow-backed candidate during the 2004 election.
The now leading opposition figure, who declared a hunger strike from prison over President Yanokovych's turn away from Europe, is Yulia Tymoshenko. On 22 November, in a letter to Yanukovych, she pledged to willingly stay in jail if he reversed his position. A heroine of the Orange Revolution, Tymoshenko was imprisoned in 2011, a year after Yanukovych came to power. Her release and departure to Germany has been a central condition of the terms for the EU signing the pact with Ukraine.
It’s believed to be due to pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that President Yanukovych has performed his dramatic U-turn, ditching years of negotiation on the EU pact. The Kremlin views Ukraine proprietarily and wants Kiev to join a Moscow-led customs union as an alternative to EU integration.
Ireland has a serious interest in Ukraine and good relations and the newly formed Irish Ukrainian Trade Association, which organised an Irish trade mission to Ukraine in October. That the Embassy of Ukraine in Ireland held a reception on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the country’s independence is a welcome sign that Ukraine is prepared to assert its independence as a sovereign state.
The wise words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the future of Ukraine should be taken on board by both the EU and Russia. “We should overcome the ‘us or them’ mentality,” she said. “The Cold War is over.”
Michael McGowan is a former MEP and President of the Development Committee of the European Parliament.
