You're reading: Teixeira: Yanukovych’s recent attempts to make visit to Brussels fail

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has tried to make a visit to Brussels, but these attempts have failed, EU Ambassador to Ukraine Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira has said.

“Immediately after coming to power, he [Yanukovych] made several
visits, [and] he was always received well in the EU. After a while, he
was trying to organize such visits, but EU leaders saw that their
opinion and advice was not being heeded. So what was the point of such a
dialogue, if no one takes into account advice?” the ambassador said in
an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

He said that since the last EU-Ukraine summit in December 2011 there
had been no visits by leaders of the EU or its member-states to Ukraine.
Even the holding of the summit in Ukraine was quite controversial, as
many in Europe spoke against this event, the diplomat noted.

Still, the EU leadership, according to Teixeira, decided to make
“this extra gesture and take this opportunity to once again give their
advice and encourage President Yanukovych to move in the right
direction.”

“This had no effect though. So it is not surprising that there are
currently no visits by representatives of the EU to Ukraine at a
political level. The same goes for Yanukovych’s visit to Brussels,” the
European diplomat said.