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Even as more Western leaders snub Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president shows no sign of easing up on imprisoned opposition leaders.

The refusals came from all over Europe: Spain, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands. Even the Dutch royal family said it wouldn’t come. Germany’s captain said he’d think twice before shaking President Viktor Yanukovych’s hand.

In the first two weeks of May, Ukraine’s co-hosting of the European soccer championship next month is rapidly descending from a lofty opportunity for the nation to prove its Europeanness to a symptom of its deepening isolation.

Several European leaders have threatened to skip the tournament in protest at the treatment of jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who went on a hunger strike last month after claiming she had been roughed up by prison guards.

Yanukovych is driving Ukraine into complete isolation.

– Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an opposition leader, former Verkhovna Rada speaker .

Amid the rising criticism, Ukraine on May 8 cancelled a Central European summit it was set to host later this month after several European leaders said they wouldn’t attend.

The heavy diplomatic blows have led to criticism inside and outside Ukraine that Yanukovych, whom many believe is behind the seven-year prison sentence that Tymoshenko got last fall, is cutting off Ukraine’s links with Europe.

“Yanukovych is driving Ukraine into complete isolation,” said former Verkhovna Rada speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an opposition leader.

When Ukraine in 2007 won the right to co-host the tournament – one of Europe’s largest sporting events – with neighbor Poland, officials hoped it would help the country improve its reputation among the thousands of fans and journalists who will visit the host cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv and Donetsk.

But the conviction of Tymoshenko on Oct. 11 for abuse of office as prime minister appears to have cost Yanukovych any PR boost from the championship. It has already cost him the chance to sign an association agreement and free-trade pact with the EU last year.

U.S. and EU officials suspect Yanukovych is using the courts to remove his main political foe. They have also criticized the authorities for violations during local elections in 2010 and increased pressure on journalists to toe the official line.

Photographs of a bruised Yulia Tymoshenko on April 25 proved to be the last straw. Ten European leaders, including the German president, announced they would skip the summit that Yanukovych was set to host in Yalta. That’s more than half of the 18 members, forcing Ukraine to, embarrassingly, postpone the meeting indefinitely.

“In 2011, when Ukraine got the right to host the next CEI [Central European Initiative] summit, it was presented by the government as a big diplomatic success. Now, I do not recall any such postponing of a large international event in Europe in decades,” said Oleksandr Sushko, an analyst at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation.

Tymoshenko called off her hunger strike on May 9 after she was transferred to hospital for treatment of chronic back pain under the supervision of German doctors. Dr. Lutz Harms said she was being slowly introduced to juice. Prison officials deny her claims that she was beaten.

Yanukovych has not commented on the boycott or Tymoshenko in recent weeks.

In a speech marking World War II Victory Day on May 9, he said the “European values remain immutable for Ukraine.”

The decision to allow Tymoshenko medical treatment, in a deal that took weeks to thrash out, is unlikely to damp Western criticism.

The European Commission has already said that its president, Jose Manuel Barroso, and its 27 top officials will not attend Euro 2012. Governments including Spain and Austria say they will not send representatives. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also threatened to stay away.

The Euro is… a chance for the nation, the Ukrainian country, to present itself from the best side. We feel that Ukraine is somewhere between a choice of integration with the Western world … or a chance to participate in a Customs Union proposed by Russia.

– Bronislaw Komorowski, President of Poland

Merkel had harsh words on May 10: “Today, Germany and the European Union are living in peace and freedom. Unfortunately, not all of Europe is, because in Ukraine and Belarus people are still suffering under dictatorship and repression.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry official said: “If someone charges us with selective justice, we can say, in this case, that from our perspective we see selective applicaton of democratic standards towards Ukraine …. because according to all respected international ratings, there is quite a number of nations in Europe and other parts of the world where democracy evidently meets much more serious challenges than in Ukraine.”

And, pointing to Germany’s close political, energy and business relations with Russia, the Foreign Ministry source added: “And Ms. Merkel … consistently develops political and economic ties with those countries.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 3 said the proposed boycott was a destructive attempt to “politicize sport events” and “harmful to the image of the championship and… millions of Ukrainians who… are not interested in politics.”

In extraordinary comments, even sportsmen who will play at the championship are noting concerns. Germany captain Philipp Lahm told German magazine Der Spiegel on May 6 that the way the Ukrainian regime “is treating Yulia Tymoshenko has nothing to do with my understanding of democracy.”

Co-hosts Poland, however, has warned that a boycott may push Ukraine toward its northeastern neighbor Russia. Moscow has been trying to get Ukraine to join a customs union it has formed with Kazakhstan and Belarus.

“The Euro is… a chance for the nation, the Ukrainian country, to present itself from the best side. We feel that Ukraine is somewhere between a choice of integration with the Western world … or a chance to participate in a Customs Union proposed by Russia,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said on Polish television on May 2.

At the same time, Komorowski called on Yanukovych to change the Soviet-era abuse-of-office crime under which Tymoshenko was imprisoned. “These regulations, born under a previous system and until today still unchanged by Ukrainian democrats, are the source of bad temptations and bad decisions,” Komorowski said in Warsaw.

Yanukovych will be in Moscow on May 15 to attend the informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, where Vladimir Putin, just inaugurated to a third term as Russian president, is expected to turn up the pressure on Ukraine to join its customs union.

“Yanukovyh can either work on the situation inside the country – figuring out the issue of political prisoners and deteriorating democracy, which he is criticized for. Or he can get closer with Russia – get into the customs union or give up some strategically important spheres for Ukraine in exchange for loans and political support from Putin,” said Valeriy Chaly, deputy director of the Razumkov Centre, a Kyiv think tank.

Some analysts say Yanukovych is simply using the threat of closer relations with Russia to keep Europe sweet.

“This is the game of political blackmail he has been playing before – if you do not love us in the West, we go to Russia,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the Institute of World Policy in Kyiv.
“But Yanukovych should have realized a long time ago that this does not work with the West,” she added.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]