Ukraine could have been the biggest hero of the summit, instead it emerged as a complete loser, failing to sign a deal with the European Union that had been in the works for years.
Until the last moment, however, there was a twinkle of hope for a chance to sign, through an amazing and dramatic turn of events that many Europeans pushed for. The epicenter of the drama was Kempinski Hotel, where many leaders stayed.
As regular Lithuanians had dinner in their homes and restaurants, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton intensely discussed a paper with her team in a Kempinski hall. In the hotel’s cafe, the whole mission of Pat Cox and Alexander Kwasniewski, as well as European Parliament President Martin Schulz, kept flipping through papers and working out the details of how their monitoring mission for Ukraine will be transformed.
In the same cafe, most of the Ukrainian government delegation, including Energy Minister Eduard Stavitsky, Finance Minister Yuriy Kolobov and Deputy National Bank Governor Mykola Udovichenko were drinking wine in the company of their aides.
Everybody was still waiting as President Viktor Yanukovych was still talking to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. Their conversation, which ran 45 minutes over schedule, seemed to be the turning point when all optimism died.
EU officials were offering Yanukovych to sign the deal. He refused again, citing the pressure from Russia and Ukraine’s economic losses.
As Van Rompuy stormed out of Kempinski and Yanukovych emerged from the negotiation room with a wooden smile, it was clear that things went nowhere. Yet the president insisted that “everything will be fine” when he was asked for his assessment of the results.
All sides were going through the same circle over-and-over again, even during the aperitif before the official dinner that kicked off the summit. In a video released by Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite team, German Chancellor Angela Merkel tells Yanukovych that “We expected more.”
Barroso and Grybauskaite keep talking to the president, evidently trying to explain to him the benefits of association with the EU. It seemed to be their last push.
The video of the exchange, shot by the Lithuanian president’s team, is remarkable in many ways. Some analysts in Vilnius said it was unprecedented and was aimed at exposing the Ukrainian president, his decision-making process and his weak arguments, and to show that the Europeans pushed to the very end to sign a deal with Ukraine – possibly at the cost of their political reputations and without any face-saving smokescreens.
The video, which exposed the Ukrainian president, was one piece of evidence of the moods among European leaders. They ranged from extreme sadness to anger, but the dominating undertone was annoyance with the Ukrainian leader.
As one European leader put it, Yanukovych just talks and talks, and it’s very annoying. Another one said he was angered by the fact that Yanukovych thought all Europeans were fools and would fall for his empty words and overblown figures of needing 160 billlion euros in assistance by 2017, astronomical numbers thrown at them at the last minute by the Ukrainian partners.
Yanukovych, in his speech at the plenary session, insisted that Ukraine still wants to sign a deal with the EU.
“I confirm Ukraine’s intention in the nearest perspective to sign an association agreement,” he said.
But his declaration comes too late now. At the official part of the summit, Ukraine got no notice and no mention. Speaking from the podium, European leaders praised Georgia and Moldova for initialing association agreements, and offered words of support.
Ukraine, on the other hand, got nothing. There will be no trilateral talks with Russia, many European officials said. The logic is: imagine Yanukovych as a mediator between us and Russia? How good can that be?
Asked when the next opportunity will be for Ukraine to sign a new deal, one European leader reportedly jokingly said: “Maybe in two years, maybe in 12.”
That’s either bad news, or very bad news. The bad news is that the fatigue from Ukraine is such that there is no short-term plan to negotiate and attempt to sign the agreement again. In fact, there does not seem to be any short-term plan.
The really bad news is that the Europeans expect that Yanukovych might try to stay in power for the next 12 years, and even might succeed. Only after he is gone will there be a new chance for Ukraine to sign the agreement.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
