The success of Ukraine’s aspirations to integrate with Europe may hinge on the fate of Yulia Tymoshenko, jailed since Aug. 5 and facing charges of exceeding authority as prime minister for the 2009 natural gas contracts she negotiated with Russia.

That’s the impression I came away with from the European Union’s Eastern Partnership summit in Warsaw on Sept. 29-30.

The Eastern Partnership is an effort by the EU to bring Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia into the democratic fold.

European leaders believe the charges against Tymoshenko are politically motivated and link the Tymoshenko trial to Kyiv’s chances to move closer to Brussels.

Although the EU is struggling through another economic crisis, the Warsaw summit was attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the most influential politicians in Europe.

Merkel also took time to have a separate closed-door meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych to talk about Tymoshenko’s fate. EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, raised the same issue with Ukraine’s president.

European leaders believe the charges against Tymoshenko are politically motivated and link the Tymoshenko trial to Kyiv’s chances to move closer to Brussels.

The cold reception that Yanukovych experienced in Warsaw behind closed doors could be also indicated by the nearly indifferent handshakes given to Yanukovych by Rompuy and the host Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk when they greeted heads of delegations on the first day of the summit.

It was starkly different from the warm hugs the EU leaders gave to Vlad Filat, the prime minister of Moldova, a country that is now rapidly becoming a new success story in the EU’s neighborhood.

It was clear from the summit that although Poles, longtime advocates of Kyiv in Europe, are trying hard to help Ukraine wrap up the association agreement with the EU, still remained unhappy about backsliding in democracy in the country.

At some point, it looked like Polish diplomats talked about Ukraine as most people speak of the dead — they speak no ill. Efforts to get some off-the-record comments from a few normally blunt Polish diplomats about what a Tymoshenko conviction would mean resulted in “we-hope-for-the-best” quotes.

Such caution is another indication that much is at stake also for Poland. For Warsaw, it’s not only the question which way Ukraine decides to go – East or West, but also a question of their own credibility for leadership since joining the EU in 2004.

Unlike Polish diplomats, Ukrainian ones were more open.


If there weren’t the Tymoshenko issue, they (Europeans) would have picked something else to slow down finalization of the association agreement with Ukraine Therefore, Tymoshenko case is nothing more than a far-fetched excuse to postpone the agreement.

“If there weren’t the Tymoshenko issue, they (Europeans) would have picked something else to slow down finalization of the association agreement with Ukraine,” a Ukrainian diplomat told. “Therefore, Tymoshenko case is nothing more than a far-fetched excuse to postpone the agreement.”

Such words seemed to be particularly cynical, given that during the summit the alarm bells sounded particularly loud against persecution of the opposition in Ukraine.

Yet it illustrates that Ukrainian officials also have no illusions that putting Tymoshenko behind bars will create an obstacle for Ukraine’s further integration into the EU. Even if one buys into the argument that persecuting the ex-premier is used by Europeans as an excuse to keep Ukraine away from the EU, then one way of disarming skeptics in Brussels is to ensure an impartial trial back in Kyiv.

Yanukovych might have miscalculated his strategy with the EU, underestimating how much damage the appearance of selective justice in the Tymoshenko trial would cause Ukraine’s European integration.

He appeared to have made a similar miscalculation with Russia in exchanging cheaper gas for allowing Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet lease in Crimea – it didn’t solve the gas issue, and left Yanukovych with one less bargaining chip with the Kremlin.

The Warsaw summit left an impression that, if Ukraine does not improve its democratic governance, it would be the last time when Yanukovych is received by European leaders as a legitimate partner.

Currently, the Ukrainian government intends to have a pompous EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv in December, with handshakes of Ukrainian and European leaders finalizing the association agreement talks. However, there is a danger that there will be no summit, if the Tymoshenko issue is not solved by then. The summit might be cancelled and the talks finalized simply with the signatures of the heads of negotiating teams on both sides.

Such a scenario will be the first concrete indication that EU leaders are trying to avoid Yanukovych, adopting a soft-isolation mode in the West, just as former President Leonid Kuchma faced during his second term in office.

After finalizing the talks, the EU might want to postpone the signing of the agreement until after the parliamentary elections next year. If Tymoshenko is banned from participating in the elections due to a criminal conviction, the elections will hardly be recognized as free and fair.

This could further hinder chances of signing the association agreement, let alone getting it ratified by 27 EU nations.

Yuriy Onyshkiv is a Kyiv Post staff writer and can be reached at [email protected]