You're reading: Financial Times: EU postpones Yanukovych visit as Kyiv hints at shift towards Moscow

In a Financial Times report. Joshua Chaffin from Brussels and Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv write:"The European Union has called off a high-level meeting with Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president, in apparent protest at the jailing of his political rival, opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The EU took the decision on Tuesday morning, saying it would postpone Thursday’s scheduled meeting in Brussels “until a later date when the conditions are more conducive to making progress on bilateral relations.”

According to the report, the "tone" coming from Yanukovych and his officials has been increasingly defiant.

“If the EU sends a clear ‘No’ signal to Ukraine, then there is a high likelihood that there will be a re-orientation towards the [Russia-led] customs union,” said Sergiy Tigipko, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, in an interview published in Ukraine’s Den newspaper.

Analyzing the situation in comments given to the Financial Times, Valeriy Chaly, a former Ukrainian deputy foreign minister and currently deputy head of Kyiv’s Razumkov think tank, described the developments as a “very troubling situation which shows that the concerns of the EU are not understood here by Ukraine’s leadership.”

“If such a line continues, then we can say that what we have here at play is a big geopolitical game with a simple aim: to end Ukraine’s EU integration drive and create conditions through which Ukraine would instead enter Russia’s customs union. It’s hard to understand the logic, but it looks as if Ukraine’s leadership could be doing this,” Chaly said.

“It is as if Ukraine said: if you demand EU standards from us, then we will go where our ways are better accepted,” Chaly added.

Click here to read the report.