The European People's Party (EPP) has stressed the need to find a peaceful way out of the crisis situation in Ukraine after the refusal by the country's leadership to sign an Association Agreement with Ukraine at a summit in Vilnius.
Speaking at the national resistance headquarters in Kyiv on Saturday, the EPP Group’s Coordinator on Foreign Affairs Jose Ignacio Salafranca supported the organization of a round table to “discuss the question of preventing violence by both sides and finding a compromise for a way out of crisis.”
Chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Elmar Brok said that if those responsible for the beating up of peaceful demonstrators in Kyiv are not punished, the EU will “close its door” for them and for those who contributed to this.
He also noted that the requirement of repeat elections in the country is the right of citizens.
EPP Vice-President Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, in turn, reiterated the EU’s requirements on the fulfillment by Ukraine of the necessary conditions. He also said that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych initially did not want to sign the agreement with the EU.
“That’s a lie and blackmail, because the European Union learned about these amounts just two weeks before the Vilnius summit. We see that Yanukovych has dishonestly held negotiations on association from the very beginning, because he did not want to sign the agreement. He wanted to sit on a fence and milk two cows – Brussels and Moscow,” he said, while commenting on the amount of EUR 20 billion in annual assistance, which was earlier announced by Yanukovych, as a requirement for the EU to sign the Association Agreement.
The speech by the European populists was broadcast on big screens on Independence Square in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s Channel 5 reported that before arriving at the Maidan they visited in hospital those injured during the dispersal of pro-EU demonstrators.
