Kiev (25 January) – “I visited
Ukraine on behalf of President of the European Commission Jose Manuel
Barroso and High Representative/ Vice-President Catherine Ashton on
Friday and Saturday.
To underline that the EU remains
engaged in facilitating a peaceful, negotiated solution out of the
crisis, I held talks with President Viktor Yanukovych, leaders of the
opposition party Batkivshchyna Arseniy Yatsenyuk, of the party Udar
Vitali Klitchko and party Svoboda Oleh Tyahnybok as well as with
representatives of the civil society. I have also visited the Maidan
square and talked to people there.
In my talks I conveyed the deep
concerns of the EU about the latest developments and underlined the need
to end the cycle of violence, to fight against impunity of perpetrators
of human rights violations and to continue an inclusive national
dialogue to find a way out of the crisis that threatens to further
destabilise the country.
My talks in Kiev showed the need
for a series of concrete steps to first start to rebuild trust of people
by stopping the spiral of violence and intimidation, to be complemented
in a second stage by an inclusive political process leading the
stability in Ukraine.
I have discussed a series of steps
to this end, that could lead to confidence building and to a political
process aimed at ending this crisis. I stressed to my Ukrainian partners
that the EU would remain engaged in this process assisting them in
de-escalating the situation and finding a way out of the crisis, as
demonstrated by the scheduled visit of High
Representative/Vice-President Cathy Ashton to Kiev next week.
