MUNICH: The Ukrainian opposition leaders held meetings with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Munich, Germany and called for more than vocal support from Europe and the US.
“What we need is not just declarations but a very clear action plan – how to fix the problem and fix the violence, how to investigate all these killings and abductions and tortures,” a member of parliament and former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.
“We are impressed with the level of solidarity in the last days. The whole world demonstrates with us,” another opposition leader Petro Poroshenko said.
“There was a very clear, transparent and firm position from the United States, from Canada, and I think the European Union is now much closer in a coordinated reaction with the United States than before,” he added.
The key Ukrainian opposition leaders including Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) leader and world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, and Fatherland Party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk will also meet US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich on Saturday.
However, Russia slammed US Secretary of State’s meeting with the Ukrainian opposition leaders as its deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin called Kerry’s meeting with the major figures of the opposition in the eastern European country a “circus.”
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders in Brussels that the political crisis in Ukraine should be solved without foreign interference. He said that that Moscow believes that meddling in Ukraine’s domestic affairs is unacceptable.
