You're reading: UDAR: Yanukovych hopes for better relations with Russia if deal with EU is frustrated

President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych expects that the failure to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union will improve relations with Russia and increase his chances for re-election as president, the UDAR Party has said in a statement. 

“If the agreement isn’t signed, and the EU gets disappointed and irritated by Ukraine and its present leadership, Ukraine will be completely isolated,” reads a report from UDAR posted on the party’s Web site on Monday.

“[Ukraine] will loose all chances for support from the international financial establishments under the conditions in which the situation in the financial-economic sector is swiftly getting worse.”

However, the party said that regardless of what Russian leadership promised and will promise to Ukrainian president, “it will betray Yanukovych all the same.”

The UDAR party said it has no doubts that in this situation Russia, as did after the Kharkiv agreements in 2010, will simply make more and more demands, right up to Ukraine completely giving up its economic and political sovereignty. In addition, the Ukrainian people will show their anger against Yanukovych for depriving them of their European future.

“The frustration of the Association Agreement, and counting on holding onto power at any price in the shadow of the Russian authoritarianism, Yanukovych has not just lead the country into a dead end, but deprived himself of the chance to give up power in a civilized way,” UDAR said.