Coynash: Yanukovych manipulates referendum question
During a television interview at the end of August, President Viktor Yanukovych stated that a referendum on whether to join the European Union or the Customs Union would inevitably be required. This was reported as widely as his equally vague assurances that all conditions for the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement would be met.
The first statement was both meaningless, and highly manipulative. Nobody is inviting Ukraine to join the EU while the failure of Yanukovych’s regime to implement far less stringent EU demands continues to place the vital Association Agreement in very real jeopardy.