Ukraine’s Long Road to European Integration 5 pages , pdf  Download Back

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Different presidents have come to power in Ukraine under different foreign policy slogans, but none have been able to conduct a coherent foreign policy. Moreover, at one time or another, each of them—Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Viktor Yanukovych—have issued formal declarations that state that European integration is Ukraine’s strategic goal. However, the need to deal with Russian economic and informational warfare has created recurring challenges and stumbling blocks for Ukraine’s leaders (as well as voters). We witnessed this trend once again in the lead up to the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) Summit in Vilnius in November 2013, when Yanukovych declined to sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement (AA). This caused massive pro-EU protests in Ukraine—the “Euromaidan,” named after the main square in Ukraine’s capital, the same place that had been the symbolic center of the 2004 Orange Revolution.