Both ex-president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and former prime minister of the country Mykola Azarov were not pro-Russian politicians and did not oppose Ukraine’s European integration. All they wanted was to negotiate conditions for themselves as favorably as possible in order to sit on two chairs and not sever relations with Russia.
Azarov himself admitted this in an interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I have never been against the association of Ukraine and the EU. On the contrary, I have been conducting difficult, persistent negotiations for three years to develop a text of the agreement that would be beneficial for Ukraine. But when I didn’t succeed, our government didn’t succeed - I must say frankly that it didn’t work because there were a number of large and serious contradictions. We needed to find a common language with both Russia and the European Union. It was precisely this agreement that did not work out ...
I would not argue that Yanukovych is a deeply pro-Russian person. Since I know him well enough - Yanukovych all these years, while I worked with him, was guided, as prime minister, by the interests of the Ukrainian economy, as president - by the interests of the Ukrainian people. It was so real.
And the issue of signing the Association Agreement was, I emphasize once again, completely different. We want Ukraine to be a European country,” Azarov said.