KIEV: A planned deal between Ukraine and the European Union was hanging in the balance yesterday after President Viktor Yanukovich made a mysterious trip to Moscow and the authorities opened a probe against the lawyer of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko, whose release is key to the EU agreeing to sign the deal with Ukraine, accused Yanukovych of “kicking to death” Kiev’s EU aspirations ahead of a crucial parliament meeting today.
Just weeks ago, the chances seemed high of Ukraine signing an Association Agreement with the European Union at a summit in Vilnius at the end of November and making a break with Russia.
The latest twist was the announcement by prosecutors that they suspected Tymoshenko’s lawyer Sergiy Vlasenko of beating his ex-wife Nataliya Okunskaya when they were married in 2010.
Denouncing the affair as “absurd”, Tymoshenko said in a statement read by her daughter Yevgenia that Yanukovych had dealt a fatal blow to the hopes of signing the Association Agreement.
After a court hearing in Kiev, Vlasenko was allowed to go free on 22,940 hryvnia ($2,800/2,100 euros) bail.
The opposition’s suspicions about the president’s intentions were amplified when it emerged Yanukovich had travelled to Moscow on Saturday for secret talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk said such secret talks could serve as the basis for impeaching the president while the head of the opposition UDAR party, world boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko, criticised the president “saying one thing and doing another”.
“You cannot allow that behind the scenes agreements and the personal phobias of Yanakovich mark the end of the European aspirations of Ukraine,” Tymoshenko, said in her statement.
AFP
