Tag: Yanukovich

The European Union yesterday (5 March) condemned a move by Ukrainian authorities to suspend parliamentary immunity for lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko, who has actively campaigned in defence of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said his country planned to sign an Association Agreement with the EU in the course of 2013. But he also stressed that the country would develop its relations with Russia’s Custom’s Union in areas which do not contradict other “international obligations”. 

Ahead of the parliamentary election in Ukraine to be held on Sunday (28 October), EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and US State Secretary Hillary Clinton said that the West will be closely watching that the poll is up to the “high standard” of the presidential election held two years ago.

Ukrainian state prosecutors urged a high court yesterday (21 August) to reject ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's appeal of her conviction for abuse of office, a case Western leaders have condemned as politically motivated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to lower the price of gas for Ukraine yesterday (12 July) during his first visit to the former Soviet republic since returning to the Kremlin in May, a meeting which Kyiv had hoped would resolve the energy stalemate.

The Ukrainian prosecution will press murder charges against the country’s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in two weeks time, Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin, who is responsible for her case, announced yesterday (9 May). 

A new trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - already serving a seven-year prison term on abuse-of-office charges - opened today (19 April) with the defendant refusing to attend on grounds of poor health.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said yesterday (7 April) it would treat Ukraine as a domestic consumer, cutting its gas bills by $8 billion (€5.59 billion) per year, if it joined Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in a customs union.

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said he was upset by the news that Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was not allowed to go to Brussels to meet him.

EU diplomats said they will scrutinise the EU-Ukraine summit on 22 November, the first to be held with newly-elected President Viktor Yanukovich, to find out whether or not their neighbour is turning away from Europe.

Viktor Yanukovych "needs to act like a unifying leader, not a divisive one," writes David Kramer, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in an April paper.

After Viktor Yanukovich, labelled by the Western press as pro-Russian, won the presidential elections in Ukraine, the EU "played its cards right" and avoided cooling down strategic relations, diplomats told EurActiv.

“The election of Victor Yanukovich is not a disaster for the European integration of [Ukraine], far from it,” Nathaniel Copsey of Birmingham's Aston University told EurActiv Slovakia in an interview.