Financial Times: Ukraine has postponed an opportunity to prosper

By Carl Bildt.

Published Nov. 23, 2013 at 8:56 am

At a meeting in Kyiv a couple of weeks ago Mykola Azarov, Ukraine’s prime minister, told Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, and myself that all four presidents and all 14 prime ministers of Ukraine since independence supported signing an ambitious association agreement with the EU.

They did so because it was seen as by far the best path to the necessary modernisation of their country. If the choice was between stagnation with Russia or integration with the EU, we were told that Ukraine had made up its mind. And opinion polls showed solid and increasing support for this European choice.