KIEV, January 25, /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich said he remains committed to the course at European integration.
His words were cited by the presidential press service.
“There’s a clear way out of the situation,” Yanukovich said meaning the rift between the Ukrainian government and the rightwing opposition craving integration in the EU at whatever cost.
“Let’s make a pause, let’s scrutinize the conditions on which we’ll have to sign /an agreement on association with the EU/ and let’s see what plant looks like,” he said at a meeting with clerics of various religious denominations.
At the end of last November, the Ukrainian authorities took an eleventh-hour decision to put off the signing of the association agreement at an EU summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Ukrainian experts and government advisers said then the text of the agreement had not been studied sufficiently and the assimilation of an array of EU standards and regulations might require the funding in the amount of up to 160 billion euro in the next few years while the national economy was in a far from perfect financial condition at the moment owing to a range of world market factors.
The decision outraged the pro-Western nationalistic opposition and its supporters in the western and central regions of the country and in the capital Kiev and triggered a so-far unending chain of violent street actions, which escalated to a dangerous degree this week.