Kiev – Page 3 – praag.org

National sovereignty inconsistent with US dollar system

From the moment that Washington launched its orchestrated coup in Kiev, Washington has been accusing Russia of “intervening in Ukraine.” This propaganda ploy succeeded. The Western presstitute media reported (nonexistent) Russian intervention to the exclusion of coverage of Washington’s obvious intervention.

Having falsely accused Russia of invading Crimea, the Obama regime now demands that Russia interfere in Crimea and prevent the referendum set for next Sunday. Unless Russia uses force to prevent the people of Crimea from exercising their right of self-determination, John Kerry declared that the Obama regime will not discuss the Ukrainian situation with Russia.

So, Kerry has given Russia the green light to send in troops to prevent Crimean self-determination.

The presstitute Western media has not noticed that out of one corner of his mouth Kerry denounces Russia for intervening and out of the other corner of his mouth Kerry demands that Russia intervene in behalf of Washington’s interest and suppress Crimean self-determination.

What is the point of such an absurd demand on Russia?

The Obama regime claims that the Crimean vote is not legal, because all of Ukraine is not voting on Crimea’s future. When Washington stole Kosovo from Serbia, Washington did not allow Serbia to vote on Kosovo secession. In the upcoming Scottish vote on whether to secede from the UK, only the Scottish are voting, not the British population. But these normal processes established in international law cannot be permitted to Crimeans, because the vote will not support Washington’s agenda.

Clearly, an Obama regime this shameless has no shame.

The neoconservative warmongers who control the Obama regime are boasting that unless Russia prevents Crimean self-determination, Washington will use sanctions to “badly damage the Russian economy.”

Sanctions are likely to backfire. Sanctions would damage economies of Washington’s NATO puppet states, making them think again about providing cover for Washington’s aggressive words and deeds. It is Europe that will pay for Washington’s aggressive actions.

Sanctions are likely to speed up the implementation of the BRICS negotiations to leave the dollar system and settle their international accounts in their own currencies. All countries with financial and economic links to the West can be intimidated, punished, and destabilized by Washington. National sovereignty is inconsistent with being part of the US dollar system.

From Washington’s standpoint, the importance of sanctions is not any economic effects.

The importance is the propaganda advantage of portraying Russia as an offending party who is punished by Washington. Not only does this propaganda put Russia in the wrong, it also portrays Russia as subservient to Washington.

The Crimean government is actually elected, whereas the Washington-installed government in Kiev is not. Here is a report on Global Research about the “democrats” who comprise the unelected government in Kiev:

During the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, Washington has established that whatever serves Washington’s agenda is legal. Laws inconsistent with Washington’s agenda are simply not applicable. They are dead letter laws. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in violation of US law that prohibits giving financial assistance to governments whose leaders come to power via coup or other illegal means, Washington is offering its stooges in Kiev $1 billion to help the coup government get up and running.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest books are, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and How America Was Lost.

Will Baroness Ashton of Upholland lead the nuclear charge?

Baroness Catherine Ashton — Catherine Ashton adjusting her GU crown

When Victoria Nuland rejected the EU solutions in Ukraine with her “Fuck the EU” comment, the EU went it alone. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier proposed that he and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, fly to Kiev and try to reach a resolution of the violence before escalation. Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski was asked to join.

The talks in Kiev included the EU delegation, Yanukovich, the three opposition leaders and a Russian representative. The US was not invited.

Then suddenly snipers began shooting into the crowd in Maidan Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in chaos according to eyewitnesses. Vitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal. Yanukovich fled Kiev.

Now that the “opposition” has driven a duly-elected president into exile and dissolved the national riot police, Berkut, Washington has demanded that Ukraine submit to very onerous IMF conditionalities. As Paul Craig Roberts writes:

According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as “aid.” However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev’s acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations.

Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness.

The conflict between the US and the EU has thus been exposed.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Moscow does not need to “invade” Ukraine. The 1997 Ukraine-Russia partition treaty specifically allows Russian troops in Crimea. No shots were fired and Russian “sons” were welcomed with open arms.

The US should start worrying about the white supremacists they so ardently and openly support in Ukraine, but shun elsewhere. If the Nazi’s take over – which seem more and more likely – the UN’s R2P (responsibility to protect) will come into play. Samantha Power, the architect of R2P, should be proud of herself for crafting the ultimate solution many hawks in the US wish for.

The three war-mongering women who represent the West’s foreign policy apparatus, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and EU official and onetime British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activist Catherine Ashton, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samatha Power, have been exposed. The first two by leaked phone calls, and the latter by her R2P plan.

Ashton, actually the grand and feudalistic Baroness Ashton of Upholland, also has an exaggerated view of her own accomplishments. She has scant knowlegde of what transpires in Europe, but flatters herself with the inflated title of High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the European Union.

Her title hasn’t lifted her dour expression and gloomy features yet, but it might be as a result of her closeness to the Great Unwashed, the GU.

The Baroness is married to former British journalist Peter Kellner, an executive of the British polling company YouGov. The pollster does political polling as well as the very dull infotainment media charts of Pop Idol and X-Factor, pandering to the GU. Only in Britain could a Labourite sink to such depths of grandeur.

In a phone call between herself and the Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet, Ashton was told what had really happened in Kiev. The High Representative could no wait to throw cold water on the information that the “opposition” – actually a NATO force with looted Libyan weapons some say – was behind the shootings of protesters and policemen.

Ashton quickly defended the new members of the Ukrainian Rada, the parliament. The Estonian Foreign Ministry in the meantime has confirmed that the transcript is authentic.

Essentially, Ashton told the Estonian foreign minister that in the Machiavellian shaping of the fake opposition in the Rada, some “cannon fodder” had been required.

Ashton’s agenda complements that of Nuland whose January phone call with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that the Obama administration was hand picking and paying the future government of Ukraine even while Ashton, as well as Nuland’s co-ideologue Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations Undersecretary General for Political Affairs, were feigning interest in a negotiated solution.

Nuland sounded certain that the US would achieve its political aims with the support of America’s bought-and-paid for UN team of Feltman and his boss, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who was known to South Korean journalists as the “slippery eel” when he served as South Korean foreign minister.

The Calcutta-born Special UN envoy to Ukraine, Dutch diplomat Robert Serry, in which Nuland expressed great confidence must also not be forgotten in the coup plot.

Thanks to the intercept capabilities of loyal and proficient Ukrainian security agents, the world now understands the perfidy of chattering women who are helping lead Europe and, possibly, the rest of the world, into a massive conflagration, possibly a nuclear war.

Russia surprised at EU refusal to comment on new leak

Kerry directing the script with Poroshenko, Klitch and Yats

Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed its surprise at the EU refusal to comment on the leaked phone conversation between the EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. Earlier the Estonian Foreign Ministry confirmed the authenticity of the recording that suggested the snipers who shot at protesters and police in the Ukrainian capital Kiev were allegedly hired by the new coalition, and not ousted President Yanukovich. The Voice of Russia’s political analyst Dmitriy Babich expressed his opinion.

How can you comment on this conversation?
I think it is just astounding what Mr. Paet had to say because basically the Western press has been saying for all these days that the file only came from the government side and it was taken as an axiom by most of the media in the West. And now we find out from Mr. Paet who talked to some opposition activists of the civil society actually. So they acknowledged that the bullets and the weapons used to kill on both sides were basically the same and that the main suspicion is not actually with Yanukovych but with what Mr. Paet called ‘the opposition coalition’. But I would like to remind you that part of this opposition is the neo-Nazis party called ‘Svoboda’. Until 2004 it was called National Social Party of Ukraine. If you read its program, they suggest that people should identify their ethnic origin in their passports, that what the call Ukrainophobia should be punished, should be seen as the criminal offence and they make quite a few other suggestions which remind one of the Nazi Germany.

So the opposition is actually responsible for the killings?
Well, I think basically that the main problem is the bias of the Western media because just if you watch television, if you watch the television images of these three months, you can see that these so-called peaceful protesters attacked police much more often than the police attacked them. The most typical situation is the police standing on the street blocking the path to the Presidential administration, hiding behind their shields, and the “peaceful protesters” in the Western understanding of this word, first they throw at them stones and Molotov cocktails, and then they attack them with metal chains, metal sticks and this is all just civil society on protest against the corrupt government. I am afraid this lead conversation will not be investigated for the very simple reason. The new prosecutor general of Ukraine Mr. Makhnitskiy, he is a member of the Svoboda party. So for more than a decade he believed that people should be checked for their loyalty for the Ukraine state on the lie detector, that people who lied about having a double citizenship, most likely Russian citizenship should be deprived of their property. So you can imagine what this kind of person will do with this recorded conversation. He is not going to investigate it.

Is there any chance that Maidan, which is still a force in Ukraine will somehow press the authorities, force the authorities to start the investigation?
I think that what you call Maidan is just a crowd, which can be manipulated like any crowd. And crowds are incapable of investigations. Crowds are moved by hate or love, they are moved by primitive emotions. And the crowd that we have seen in the center of Kiev for these three months was an evil crowd. Even its supporters agree that about 50% was moved because of hatred for corruption and 50% moved by hatred for Russia and Russians. I think that ethnic hate is a lot worse than corruption and certainly these people are not going to push for a fair investigation and they are not going to accept the results of a fair investigation because in their hearts they have already blamed their enemies from everything.

Let’s get back to this tape. If we listen to it carefully, to what Mr. Paet and Catherine Ashton were talking about and to what they said, they actually never said that these facts should be concealed. So probably, is there a chance that international community, the so-called international community would somehow, especially now when it is leaked, press the authorities to still investigate it?
No, I don’t believe in it because the international community had every evening lots of television images before its eyes and it continues to pronounce the same lies. They have seen the Molotov cocktails, they have seen the policemen killed and mutilated, and they continued calling these people peaceful protesters for three months. So do you think that after this huge lie they are going to investigate just one small lie that conspired in the recorded phone conversation? No, the EU and the US engaged themselves 100% on the side of the opposition. They failed to guarantee the Agreement on division of power, which was signed between Yanukovych and the opposition on the 21st of February. Their attitude is not compromised in the investigation. Their attitude is media on slot and victory. And victory under the slogan “the winner takes all”. That’s their attitude, it is extremely destructive.

If we talk about situation in Ukraine. The two politicians are actually talking about credibility of Ukrainian politicians and they also say that the only one who is more or less popular both in so-called civil society and among Maidan and also in eastern Ukraine is Mr. Poroshenko. Do you think that actually reflects the state of affairs in Ukraine that no one is popular there except for one or two people?
The problem is that all their conversation is extremely amateurish. These are the people who have very superficial knowledge of Ukrainian politics. But they feel themselves empowered to discuss and decide who is going to be the next government and their attitude is based on hear-see things like “I liked this Olga, I think she should be the next Minister of Health”. Poroshenko is sympathetic to me; I think he should be a member of the new government. That reminds me of Victoria Nuland’s conversation that was also recorded how she says to the American Ambassador in Kiev “Okay, Yatzenuk, she calls him Yatz, he started with economics, so he probably should be in the next government”. You know, Klitch, this is the way she calls Klitchko “I don’t like him. He shouldn’t be in that government”. She probably doesn’t like him because he is a boxer and that doesn’t reflect well on her image of a member of government. So this talk is just laughable, it is extremely amateurish. And I think it is tragic that these kinds of people actually decide the fate of the country that has a population of 46 million. And this people lecture Russia and they lecture Ukrainians on how they should live, how bad we all are, and this is just pathetic. This is the only word I can find for it. Pathetic.

Source: Voice of Russia

New leak: Current Ukranian leaders hired snipers

Details of a leaked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet presented evidence that the US-backed opposition was responsible for hiring snipers who gunned down protesters in Kiev and not the deposed government of Viktor Yanukovich, as the media widely claimed.

More than 90 people were killed and another 900 injured during the standoff between police and protesters at Maidan Saquare in Kiev last month.

During the phone call, Paet tells Ashton that evidence presented to him by a doctor, Olga Bogomolets, who treated victims of the sniper attacks clearly indicates both police and protesters were being shot at by the same people. She has also just turned down the position of Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for Humanitarian Affairs offered by the coup-appointed regime.

“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” said Paet during the phone call.

The Estonian FM has described the whole sniper issue as “disturbing” and added, “it already discredits from the very beginning” the new Ukrainian power.

His overall impressions of what he saw during his one-day trip to Kiev are “sad,” Paet said during the conversation.

He stressed that the Ukrainian people don’t trust the Maidan leaders, with all the opposition politicians slated to join the new government “having dirty past.”

The file was reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich who hacked Paet’s and Ashton’s phones.

“And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” the Estonian FM added.

Ashton reacted to the information by saying: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”

The true narrative therefore suggests that forces within the opposition hired the snipers in order to kill protesters and then blame the deaths on Yanukovich’s administration, thereby delegitimizing his bid to hold onto power.

This is a classic example of the kind “false flag” attack that NATO, which has vehemently sided with the opposition, perfected in Europe with Operation Gladio.

“I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton said in response to Paet.

A secretive British “forensic team” who refused to tell the BBC who they were working for, concluded that the Yanukovich government was responsible for the “bloodbath” before any formal results were published. There is strong reason to believe they were quickly sent in to clean up the crime scenes and destroy evidence.

Paet indicated that the newly installed government had since launched a cover-up of the sniper attacks, remarking, “They don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”

The phone call was conducted after Paet visited Kiev on February 25 at the height of the clashes between police and protesters.

Ukranian Rabbi urges Jews to flee Kiev

Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, called on Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country if possible, fearing that the city’s Jews will be victimized in the chaos, Israeli daily Maariv reported Friday.

“I told my congregation to leave the city center or the city all together and if possible the country too,” Rabbi Azman told Maariv. “I don’t want to tempt fate,” he added, “but there are constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions.”

According to the paper’s report Azman closed the Jewish community’s schools but still holds three daily prayers. He said the Israeli embassy told members of the Jewish community to avoid leaving their homes.

Source: Haaretz

US media’s knee-jerk response to Putin leads to Berlin-Moscow axis

by Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

When it comes to President Vladimir Putin, who enjoys an approval rate of 65 percent among Russians, the motto of the menagerie of morons that is the American media is ignorance über alles.

The energetic and reflexive demonization of a Russian leader – unparalleled during communism – against the backdrop of the Sochi Olympic Games and the conflagration in the Ukraine, is the handiwork of a conga-line of cretins, stateside, whose bombast comports with the boorishness of their pronouncements.

The “Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest,” one wag’s delicious description of broadcaster Bill O’Reilly, is not delimited by ideology. Instead, “wanton Putin bashing,” as scholar of Russian history Stephen Cohen attests, is the order of the day at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, on and on.

As to “traditional journalistic standards”: In the service of their anti-Putin monomania, the U.S. Pussy Riot press and its approved phalanx of “experts” routinely omit “facts and context,” conflate “reporting with analysis,” and court conformity and unanimity at the cost of veracity and impartiality.

(Revered in the U.S., Pussy Riot is a punk rock Russian band of feminists, whose forté is breast-baring, defiling places of worship, punching the air while shrieking, “F–k you Putin,” and participating in public-orgy protests and other criminal acts.)

The “Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest,” fortunately, is not a feature of the nuanced and informed analysis available on the John Batchelor Show, where the scholarly host and his guest, professor Cohen, delve deeply into the region’s geopolitical dynamics.

Cohen, who tackled O’Reilly’s out-and-proud ignorance with aplomb, was slightly more flummoxed by that of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. She blamed Putin for Ukraine having “spun into politician chaos.” To wit, Europe had offered Ukraine $800 million in aid. The Kremlin “outbid the West” to the tune of billions, but held back on the last installment because it wanted to see to which government Russian funds would ultimately be going. Although Putin has since released the remaining funds to Ukraine, Mitchell surmised that Putin had orchestrated recent events so as to compel Kiev to sell-out to the Kremlin.

Nonsense on stilts. If anything, Putin’s impetus would be to avert trouble in Ukraine during the Sochi Olympics. Add Putin to the list of people who do not control what unfolds in Kiev, belabors Cohen.

Contrary to America’s Democracy Alinskyites – media, academia, members of the Stupid and Evil Parties, State Department floozy Victoria Nuland (taped plotting to “midwife a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government”), John McMussolini – the Ukrainian People, not unlike the “American People,” are not one people. The country is riven – divided into Western and Eastern regions, respectively. The West has been seduced by EU membership; the East is culturally and historically enmeshed in Russia.

What we’re witnessing is a tale of two Ukraines.

As it stands, explains Cohen, Kiev has lost control over Western Ukraine. Moderate voices are being silenced. Armed provocateurs are inciting matters and undermining moderate leadership. Revolution is being fomented.

Ukraine is not a dictatorship, it is an anarchy.

As to the demands issued by Vice President Joe Biden that the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych withdraw forces from the Maidan, the site of the protests: “preposterous,” avers Cohen. The “occupation of government buildings in Kiev and in Western Ukraine, the hurling of firebombs at police and other violent assaults on law enforcement officers … all documented and even televised”: these would not be tolerated in any Western democracy.

Equally outrageous is the Obama administration’s improvised and impromptu demands that the same democratically elected president step down before elections are held next year. The rational solution to the chaos in Ukraine is to allow the parties to “chill out” and resolve to wait until the February elections, next year, whereupon a referendum question can be tagged to the ballot to help decide whether Ukraine should sign up with Europe or Russia. (Cohen advocates an either/or “democratic” decision; I say secession.)

Should cool heads fail to prevail in the negotiation of a political solution, the division of Ukraine is impending, with part of the country cleaving to Europe, the other to Russia.

The “struggle for Ukraine” is a chapter in a series of U.S.-orchestrated provocations, which began with the expansion of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) eastward to abut Russia’s borders – an expansion pursued by Clinton, Bush and Obama alike. It gathered momentum with the U.S.-backed attempts to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine into the North Atlantic alliance.

The next stage in goading the Russian Bear consisted in American-funded NGO political-action groups – many of them backed by George Soros – flooding Russia proper. (“Purple” in Iraq, Blue in Kuwait, Cotton in Uzbekistan, Grape in Moldova, “Orange” in the Ukraine, “Rose” in Georgia, “Tulip” in Kyrgizstan, “Cedar” in Lebanon, Jasmine in Tunisia, Green in Iran, still un-christened in Russia and Syria: Dig around and you’ll find American activists à la Alinsky behind these “color-coded,” plant-based revolutions, blessed and backed by Foggy Bottom.)

“A U.S.-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia” completed the provocation. “Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it – not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy – is deceitful,” inveighs Cohen.

Also upon us is a second Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, which will see a close, bilateral collaboration between Berlin and Moscow – Putin and Angela Merkel enjoy a cozy and copacetic relationship and will likely work together to dominate Eurasia.

Having flouted America’s national interests and squandered Russian goodwill – the ignoramuses of the Beltway will have no place in this grand geopolitical realignment.

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

EU, US exploiting nationalism in Ukraine

EU exploiting nationalism to Russia — EU, US exploiting nationalism to fend off Russia in Ukraine

Ukraine’s opposition will march on parliament to pressure lawmakers struggling to end a deadly three-month political standoff, jeopardizing compromises that eased tensions over the past week.

Vitali Klitschko, a former boxing champion and EU man, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a lawmaker and former central banker, plan to lead thousands of demonstrators today on the first mass action outside their Independence Square compound since Jan. 19, when the last attempt to reach parliament erupted in clashes with police.

“If politicians don’t make a decision, we the people will,” Serhiy, a 23-year-old from the Lviv region near Poland, said inside the encampment, wearing camouflage and a bulletproof vest adorned with a paper “self defense” badge. “We’ve had enough. We’re fighters. We haven’t come here to listen to talks. If we decide to act, we’ll act.”

The standoff began Nov. 21, when Yanukovych pulled out of a free-trade deal with the EU, opting instead for President Vladimir Putin’s offer of $15 billion of aid and cheaper gas.

Russia, which stopped buying bonds from Ukraine’s cash-strapped government after Yanukovych’s Russian-born prime minister, Mykola Azarov, resigned on Jan. 28, said yesterday it will resume purchases, including $2 billion this week. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov made the announcement just as Klitschko and Yatsenyuk were meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin to seek financial and political backing to form a new government.

Source: Business Week

Protest funded by Soros in Ukraine turns violent

Theprotests in Ukraine organized by USAID, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House, George Soros’ Open Society Institute and a host of public-private NGOs have turned violent.

Intense street battles raged in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Monday following protests over the weekend against newly enacted laws curtailing public assembly. The law bans and imposes strict penalties for the use of stages and tents in public spaces. It also outlaws helmets and balaclavas.

The fighting began on a side street near the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovnaya Rada, near Independence Square on Sunday.

‘Free Ukraine, not me,’ Tymoshenko urges EU leaders

Jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko called on EU leaders to drop all demands and sign a historic pact with Ukraine without any preconditions at a summit that opens Thursday.

The EU demanded that Ukraine boost the rule of law and free the jailed former prime minister before the two could sign a landmark political and free trade deal.

But last week President Viktor Yanukovych’s government stunned the West by halting all negotiations on the deal that would have set it on a path to EU membership, saying it wanted better terms.

Yanukovych said he would still travel to the two-day summit in Vilnius to continue negotiations but his government’s shock decision sparked the biggest rallies since the pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004.

“If Yanukovych takes a positive decision, I passionately ask you to sign the agreement on Friday without any hesitation and conditions including those that are related to my release,” Tymoshenko, 53, said in a message read out by her daughter Yevgenia late Wednesday.

“I thank you for steadfastly defending democracy in Ukraine. But today it’s necessary to release not just separate political prisoners,” said Tymoshenko who on Monday launched a hunger strike in solidarity with pro-European protesters.

“It’s necessary to free Ukraine. That means it’s necessary to sign the agreement if Yanukovych agrees to it.”

“By signing the agreement with him, you would help an entire nation to overcome a civilisational abyss created by erroneous ideologies and agressive empires, you would make another important step towards re-uniting the entire Europe.”

The Ukrainian government’s decision to scrap the EU pact has brought tens of thousands onto the streets since Sunday.

Setting up camp in central Kiev and led by opposition leaders including world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, protesters has staged mass rallies since Sunday.

Yanukovych has called for calm after the protests turned violent, with riot police firing tear gas and protesters hurling traffic cones and rocks at the security forces.

Yanukovych stressed he would wait for better EU terms including financial aid before considering signing the deal. He said the bloc offered insufficient compensation for the damages Ukraine would suffer by rupturing ties with historic master Russia.

The EU said it was still ready to talk about the deal but the ball was in Ukraine’s court.

“Our offer stays on the table,” said the EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele.

The debate over Ukraine’s future has turned into a heated diplomatic tussle between the EU and the Kremlin.

Russia wants its smaller neighbour to join a Moscow-led Customs Union which already includes the ex-Soviet states of Belarus and Kazakhstan. Moscow has repeatedly threatened Ukraine, which heavily depends on Russian natural gas, with economic retaliation if it signed the EU pact.

Top EU officials have said they “strongly disapprove” of Russian pressure on Kiev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded by advising “our friends in Brussels, my personal good friends in the European Commission, to hold back on the sharp words”.

Kiev’s move to scrap the deal with the EU came after parliament failed to adopt legislation that would have freed Tymoshenko.

Shortly after she lost to Yanukovych in a 2010 presidential election, she was sentenced to seven years on abuse of power charges that the West sees as politically motivated.

Ukrainian opposition leaders Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnybok are also expected at the Vilnius summit. – AFP