The European Commission will on Wednesday (15 May) adopt a legal proposal for EU countries to sign a major treaty with Ukraine despite scant progress on reform. In what EU officials are calling a purely "technical" step ...

Tuesday's (30 April) ruling by the human rights court in Strasbourg will test whether President Viktor Yanukovych really wants EU integration, the Ukrainian opposition says. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ...

There are politicians whose memoirs are such guaranteed bestsellers that publishers will happily make deals in advance. In advance, that is, of the book being finished. Not of a book perhaps being written or perhaps not ...

The political situation in Ukraine remains tense. Last autumn’s parliamentary elections were supposed to be a litmus test, a chance for Ukraine to show that it is on track towards European integration. But restrictions ...

In Ukraine, informal rules and norms of behaviour are respected much more than legislation and constitutions. The term "doublethink" was coined by George Orwell to describe this act of simultaneously accepting two ...

The European Commission has said it would welcome joint control of Ukraine's EU-transit gas pipelines by Russian energy giant Gazprom. Energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger told Ukrainian daily Kommersant-Ukraine in an ...

The EU has ended a mini-Cold-War with Ukraine by welcoming back its President in Brussels. The meeting with Viktor Yanukovych on Monday (25 February) comes after EU leaders last year boycotted a regional summit in Yalta ...

Eastern Europe dominates this week's agenda (25 February - 3 March) as EU leaders hope to pave the way for a “historic breakthrough” with Ukraine, while Latvia lays out its plans to join the euro. Ukrainian President ...

Alleged sabotage of a major news agency, the axing of a top TV show - days ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit, diplomats fear a new media crackdown in Kiev. Staff at the online Unian agency held a crisis meeting on Tuesday ( ...

In the light of today’s constellation of forces and interests in eastern Europe, Germany needs to adopt a new eastern policy. A future German approach should combine high level of attention to Russia with more care for ...

Russia will cut gas flows to Ukraine "in the next few days," impacting EU countries, but only if the weather stays warm, a Ukrainian expert predicts. Mihail Gonchar - a director of the Sevastopol-based think tank, Nomos ...

EU foreign ministers in Brussels said on Monday (10 December) they aim to expand political and economic ties with Ukraine in November next year. An association and free trade agreement between the two has already been ...

A handful of EU countries are keen to sign an EU pact with Ukraine in autumn despite its erosion of democratic standards. Sources told EUobserver the Czech republic, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia want to sign the trade ...

In view of how the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 28 October went, the prospects of signing the EU-Ukraine association agreement any time soon look dim. What should the EU do now? Below, we present a list of ...

The EU and Ukraine will "most likely" not hold a summit this year, but diplomats blame it on technical instead of political reasons. "We wanted to see the elections [in Ukraine] take place before we started preparations ...

Prospects for an EU-Ukraine treaty faded further on Monday (29 October) when election monitors said Ukraine is going backward on democracy. The Vienna-based voting watchdog, the OSCE, noted that election day itself went ...

A kidnapping on the streets of Kiev, allegations the President is a peeping Tom and that a top opposition figure ordered a gangland murder - Ukraine goes to the polls this weekend in a weird climate which counts for ...

Ukraine’s high court decision to toss out an appeal by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko may place an additional strain on EU relations with the country, EU foreign affairs spokesperson Michael Mann told reporters ...

In the frying pan of sultry Kyiv, the political temperature has also reached unusual heights for summer. After months of speculation, all the major political camps have made public their lists of candidates for ...

A prominent MEP has said Ukraine's decision to exclude Yulia Tymoshenko from parliamentary elections means a priori they will be unfair. But the European Commission disagrees. The Central Election Commission on 8 August ...

Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych has no intention of releasing imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Despite mounting international pressure and boycotts of Euro2012 matches in Ukraine by Western ...

Former Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski and Irish politician Pat Cox are to keep an eye on Yulia Tymoshenko's appeal in a bid to repair EU-Ukraine relations. European Parliament President Martin Schulz named the ...

The EU-endorsed Nabucco pipeline project is shrinking and might vanish by the end of June. When executives from five energy firms - Botas, Bulgargaz, Mol, OMV and Transgaz - ate dinner in Vienna in October 2002 after ...

MEPs from across the political spectrum have criticised EU member states Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary, as well as neighbouring Russia, Ukraine and Moldova over an upsurge in homophobia. "The European Parliament ...

The family of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has asked the EU parliament to change its plan on medical monitoring in case the original one is counter-productive. Parliament President Martin Schulz last ...

Ukraine has confirmed details of an EU parliament mission to monitor the well-being of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A parliament source said on Tuesday (21 May) that Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has ...

EU-Ukraine diplomacy reached new heights of confusion during a visit by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to Brussels on Tuesday (15 May) and Wednesday. A few days before he came, EU Council chief Herman Van Rompuy had told ...

EU foreign ministes in Brussels on Monday (14 May) gave mixed views on the boycott of next month's Euro2012 football games in Ukraine. The foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden spoke out against the idea. Poland's ...

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy - the Union's highest official in protocol terms - has told Ukraine's prime minister, Mykola Azaraov, he is not welcome in the EU capital. "Ukraine's prime minister announced that ...

Ukraine's EU ambassador has told justice commissioner Vivianne Reding that she should be less "emotional" in a riposte to her Euro2012 boycott. The diplomat, Konstiantin Yelisieiev, in a letter dated 2 May - and seen by ...

The President of Poland - which is co-hosting Euro2012 with Ukraine - has accused EU politicians planning to boycott Ukrainian matches of ulterior motives. Speaking on national TV on Wednesday (2 May), Bronislaw ...

Before the furore over Yulia Tymoshenko's bruises and Euro2012 Ukraine and the European Union initialed their Association Agreement on 30 March. It seemed like progress, albeit of a technical nature, with the hardest ...

EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding is to boycott the Euro2012 football championships in Ukraine for political reasons, amid reports the German Chancellor might do the same. Reding spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told ...

Ukraine's ruling Party of Regions (PoR) has hired Burson-Marsteller - a top PR company in Brussels - amid a smear campaign against former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Robert Mack, a senior manager at Burson- ...

Ukraine has stepped up efforts to dismantle the country's main opposition party after initialing a political and trade agreement with the EU. Diplomats from both sides at a ceremony in Brussels on 30 March formally ...

Last week she was raped, choked, thrown into a pit on a construction site and set on fire. In order to save her life, doctors have amputated her feet and her right arm. She has also lost her kidneys and 55 percent of ...

Eugenia Carr, the daughter of former Ukrainian leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, suspects that her mother is being poisoned and said Germany's Angela Merkel has promised to help. She told EUobserver in an interview in Brussels ...

Ukraine has given a political thumping to the EU ambassador in Kiev in what is amounting to a bad week for relations with ex-Soviet neighbours. Its foreign ministry on Tuesday (28 February) summoned him to give ...

Belarus will only become a democracy when Russia does, Brussels-based opposition campaigner Olga Stuzhinkaya has said, noting that the EU does not figure highly on authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko's Russia- ...

Throughout 2011 Ukraine was locked in a dispute with Russia over gas prices. The quarrel is set to escalate in 2012 as Russia squeezes Kyiv to choose deeper integration with Moscow in exchange for cheaper gas. The ...

A top ally of former Ukrainian leader Yulia Tymoshenko has accused authorities of trying to "kill" her after a health scare in prison at the weekend. Former deputy prime minister and Tymoshenko party MP Hyorhiy Nemyria ...

Twenty years after its independence, Ukraine seems to have finally stopped shifting between its past and future, firmly choosing the European path. The Association Agreement with the European Union has the potential to ...

The man responsible for Ukraine's Euro 2012 football championship has said Uefa is doing more than the EU institutions to modernise the country. Markiyan Lubkivskyi, Ukraine's former ambassador to Bosnia and Croatia and ...

The EU and Ukraine have agreed the text of a new bilateral treaty. But EU leaders warned it will not be worth the paper it is written on unless Ukraine holds normal elections next year. The two sides announced they have ...

The top story on Ukraine is the jailing of former leader Yulia Tymoshenko. But businessmen and diplomats also warn that investing in the country is becoming more dangerous due to state-sanctioned 'corporate raiding'. ...

There is nothing like political or diplomatic suspense. As the EU-Ukraine summit on 19 December approaches, nobody dares to blink. Brussels holds in its hands the future of an Association Agreement negotiated with Kyiv ...

Ukraine has been a significant factor behind the EU’s progressively increased engagement in its eastern neighbourhood, with Kiev repeatedly pushing the EU to bring more to the table. While a clear EU membership ...

Ukraine's celebrity general prosecutor has offered to investigate President Viktor Yanukovych for alleged corruption in a bid to improve his country's image in the EU. The jurist, Rinat Kuzmin, famous for putting former ...

The EU is continuing to call for legal reform in Ukraine, while Ukraine is still demanding an EU accession promise ahead of a summit that is unlikely to see the initialing of a landmark association treaty. MPs loyal to ...