Ukraine has been the main talking point in Dublin, where the European Popular Party is holding its congress. Among the particpants are some of the pro-European movement’s most emblematic characters.
Vitaly Klitschko was one of several Eastern European political leaders to call on the EU to take stronger action in Ukraine.
The country’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko warned that instability in the country threatens to spread across the whole region.
These sentiments are shared by Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili who told Euronews: “They announced that they would annex Crimea. They have the same plan for the Georgian occupied regions and apparently they have the same plans for Transnistria. Nobody since Hitler has tried anything like that in Europe. And remember back then, people were saying: let’s give him that and maybe he will calm down. He didn’t calm down. (The) more you feed these countries to them, (the) more these people go on,” he said.
Andrius Kubilius, Lithuania’s former prime minister, said: “We, in Lithuania, we are feeling ourselves in a really dangerous region. Obviously the question in Lithuania is very simple. In 2008, it was Georgia. Just now, it is Ukraine, and who will be the next? In everybody’s mind, the answer is very clear. Baltic states are not very secure.”
Outside the congress, pro-Ukrainian demonstrators also expressed their anger, leaving no doubt as to what they think about Vladimir Putin’s stance against the new regime.
