Ukraine president accused of distorting EU position on Ukraine reform

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been accused of distorting the EU’s position as negative in regards to two reform projects in Ukraine, the pravda.com.ua news site reported. The distortions were part of the president’s agenda of rejecting the reform proposals, the report said. At the Sept. 21 closed session of the National Reforms Council, the president is alleged to have said the EU doesn’t support the “On state service” legislation, proposing to recall it from the parliamentary agenda for amending. “The president said that the EU recalled funding because it’s dissatisfied with the bill,” wrote on his Facebook page Danylo Pasko, a council member. Instead, the eurointegration.com.ua news site found out from anonymous sources in the EU that they actually support the bill’s approval as soon as possible. Moreover, Ukraine could lose millions in financing for the Contract to Rebuild the State if the legislation isn’t approved.

At the same session, Poroshenko allegedly claimed that EU Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Tombinski didn’t oppose the Prosecutor General’s four nominations to the commission to appoint the lead prosecutor of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, reported the eurointegration.com.ua news site. Instead, Tombinski’s office posted a statement on Facebook acknowledging problems in forming the commission and that the public doesn’t trust the Prosecutor General’s candidates, who are suspected of corruption.

For his information, the president cited a conversation between Tombinski and Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the news site reported, without citing its sources. “The absence of the anti-corruption prosecutor interferes with launching the work of the National Anticorruption Bureau and creates one of the key hurdles to introducing a visa-free regime with the EU,” the report said. “At the moment, it’s unclear who was the source of the false information – Shokin or Poroshenko himself.”

Zenon Zawada: Without knowing whether the claims are true, they nevertheless fit with a troubling pattern of the government stalling reforms. Although fighting corruption is the most important concern for the Ukrainian public, as a recent poll indicated, it’s not a top concern for Poroshenko or Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, both of whom are entangled in their own corruption scandals. As we’ve said many times, the top leaders of Ukraine are threatening the stability of the state – not much less than what Putin is doing – with their lack of leadership in this critical issue.