Hanna Herman, an adviser for the Ukrainian president and the head of the main department for humanitarian and socio-political matters at the Presidential Administration, has said she hopes that the arrest of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will not disrupt the signing of the association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union.
"I hope that the West is now beginning to understand that European integration is important for Ukraine and it cannot oppose the fate of one person, even if it’s such a great and good person as Yulia Volodymyrivna [Tymoshenko], the country’s fate, and the direction in which the state is moving," she said at a press conference on Monday.
"I think that this story with Yulia Tymoshenko was very well used by the forces that want to repeat the story with the Kolchuga [the release by a former officer of the State Guard Department, Major Mykola Melnychenko, of information regarding the sale of Kolchuga military radar systems to the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein]," Herman said.
She said that "those who developed this scenario understood quite well" that Tymoshenko would appeal, first and foremost, to the West, and added that the scenario was being realized in order to prevent Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
"The whole idea of this story is very simple – to turn the European orientation of Ukraine, where it is moving, to another direction, and to push a weakened Ukraine in the face of a weakened government to another way… I feel sorry for [Tymoshenko], because I don’t know if she realizes how her name will be used to destroy Ukraine," Herman said.
She also denied reports that the situation had been organized from the Presidential Administration of Ukraine on Bankova Street.
"I deny this," she said.
