On March 30, John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv and now director of the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University in Washington, wrote on these pages that the anti-democratic policies of the Yanukovich administration in Ukraine were holding up signing an Association Agreement with the European Union, and that the “most persuasive step” Kyiv could take would be to free two imprisoned opposition leaders, Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko (“Ukraine can’t have it both ways”). Ukraine’s ambassador to the E.U. offers Kyiv’s position.
A year has passed since Ukraine and the European Union initialed the Association Agreement. It has been a difficult time and is unlikely to become any easier in the run-up to the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit in November when the Association Agreement, including a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (D.C.F.T.A.) agreement, should be signed.
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