madam president on sunday i had the privilege to be present in kiev as an observer for the ecr group
everything i saw was peaceful transparent and in many ways curiously more robust than in my own country the uk with transparent ballot boxes and photo id required in order to allow you to vote
however i was of course disappointed by the result because president yanukovich is no western-style democrat
he will now formally drop all nato aspirations and pay only lip-service to eu membership for his country which of course is now also formally opposed by russia his close friend and neighbour
he will content himself instead with an fta and a visa liberalisation regime
mrs tymoshenko is clutching at straws in my view by challenging the result of her narrow defeat in the courts and i doubt very much this will succeed
the one real concern i have now is what i heard being discussed on the night renewed splittist tendencies to break off the ukrainian west opposed to yanukovich and supporters of tymoshenko to either join poland or form a new western state
it probably will not happen but if it does it must be peaceful and by consensus
what we must do here in the european union is to support the legacy of the orange revolution and our common shared democratic values with ukraine
