Ukrainian Prime Minister: We’ll Sign Association Agreement With EU Like Protesters Want, But First the EU Has to Send Us Money

Pro-European protests centered around Kiev’s
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square),
dubbed Euromaidan, have gripped Ukraine since November 21, when
the government
announced it would put a planned “association agreement” with
the European Union on hold.  After three weeks of protests,
punctuated by clashes with police and failed attempts to disperse
demonstrators that have only emboldened them, the Ukrainian
government says it’s ready to sign the association agreement with
the EU, but first it wants a promise of $27.5 billion
in financial assistance. That’s a more specific iteration of
the initial Ukrainian demand Europe compensate
it for perceived short-term economic losses that came with the
decision to scuttle the agreement in November. The Ukrainian
government considered the IMF’s loan conditions too harsh, and

blamed them too for the collapse of the agreement with the EU.
In the crisis of weeks of protest, the Ukrainian government found
an opportunity to try to use them to get a better deal from the
EU.

Ukraine’s November decision to suspend talks with Europe, the
Washington Post
reported then, had also been influenced by pressure from Russia
for Ukraine to join its own Customs Union (with Belarus and
Kazakhstan), and by European demands that the Ukrainian government
release former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was targeted
for prosecution after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president
in 2010, and Tymoshenko was eventually charged and convicted for
abuse of office related to a gas deal with Russia. Currently in
prison, Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the last mass protests
in the Ukraine, the so-called “Orange Revolution” in 2004 that
contributed to Yanukovych’s eventual loss in that year’s
presidential election. Yanukovych had in fact won the original
run-off, but those results were annulled by the Supreme Court for
being fraudulent. A  Moscow
Times write up compared the current protests and the
Orange Revolution, noting the similar West vs. East contours of
both, but also that while the Ukrainian government is in a stronger
position than it was in 2004, that the path toward integration with
Europe might already be irreversible.

For their part, EU leaders stress stronger relations with the
Ukraine don’t have to come at the expense of cooperation with
Russia. Russia’s tightening of border controls and trade
restrictions in response to the Ukraine’s work on an agreement with
the EU, unfortunately, indicate Russia is not interested in what
the EU describes as a “win-win” (as the taking down of trade
barriers
always is!). Unfortunately with trade deals between
governments, taking down trade barriers is rarely all it is, hence
the
scramble by the EU to find financial aid for Ukraine if it
signs a deal in part to cover for expected trade losses from
Russia.