YALTA – In case Ukraine’s political leaders still haven’t gotten the message yet, one of the nation’s best friends drove home the point once more on Sept. 21: Release ex-Prime Minister of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison to assure the Nov. 28-29 signing of a cooperation agreement with the European Union.
YALTA – In case Ukraine’s political leaders still haven’t gotten the message yet, one of the nation’s best friends drove home the point once more on Sept. 21: Release ex-Prime Minister of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison to assure the Nov. 28-29 signing of a cooperation agreement with the European Union.
“On the Yulia case, undertakings have been made, promises have been made. It’s a question of trust,” said Polish Foreign Minister
Radoslaw Sikorski. “When Elmar Brok tells you the Yulia case is important, it means that the Yulia case is important to” German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Sikorski’s reference to Brok, a German member of the European Parliament and a Merkel adviser, highlights a long-rumored deal in the works to let Tymoshenko out of prison in Kharkiv to go abroad to Germany for medical treatment of a bad back. On the sidelines of the conference, Brok also said that the deal would require Ukraine to close criminal cases against Tymoshenko.
Such an agreement would help assure the signing of a political association and free-trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU, whose 28 leaders have to agree unanimously on the issue.
A day earlier, President Viktor Yanukovych said in Yalta that only the courts can decide Tymoshenko’s fate, not him, rebuffing pleas that he issue a presidential pardon of his nemesis. Yanukovych has declared that integration with the European Union is his top foreign policy priority, but critics say that his actions suggest that he doesn’t want to move to the West.
Sikorski also went on to suggest that Tymoshenko may not accept the bargain to leave Ukraine.
“The risk of miscalculating the impact of the Tymoshenko case is too big for you to take,” Sikorski said. “Both your president and Mrs. Tymoshenko must do what’s right in the next few days.”
Tymoshenko is in the third year of a seven-year prison term for, as prime minister in 2009, signing a natural gas agreement with Russia. The West regards the two-time prime minister, who came within four percentage points of beating Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential election, as a political prisoner.
On the panel with Sikorski was Brok and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara, who said he had no right to take a position that differed from Yanukovych on the Tymoshenko issue.
Sikorski cited Poland’s experience as a Soviet bloc country and the financial instabilities of the 1990s before it joined the European Union. Ukraine can do the same, too.
“Create conditions for investment and fight corruption and you can become a modern European state,” Sikorski said. “We’ve done it and so can you. You are on the last lap and you have to have a good finish. It would be a shame to be overtaken by events so close to finishing line.”
He said that Ukraine will be more susceptible to Russia if it stays in a geopolitical grey zone between the EU and Russia. “Poland’s
relations with Russia are better now that we are members of the EU than before, when the question was open. When the question is open, they feel the right to exert pressure. Once the question is settled, they have to live with the sovereign decision.”
He said that he hopes that “reason prevails. Nobody benefits from politically motivated boycotts or trade wars. If Ukraine makes modernizing efforts, I hope Russia will be next.”
On another top at the forum, Kozhara denied a Washington Post report that Russia is exporting arms to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through a Black Sea port near Odessa.
Ukraine has made “no shipments since 2011 of any specific commodities or military related goods to Syria,” Kozhara said. “It is a
complete lie.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
