On the anniversary of visa-free travel, Poroshenko revealed unknown details of this diplomatic victory
During the joint special program of “Pryamoy” and “Channel 5” “Let’s Talk About Ukraine”, dedicated to the anniversary of the visa-free regime with the European Union, Petro Poroshenko revealed unknown facts about this diplomatic achievement of Ukraine.
This was reported by the press service of “European Solidarity” .
“Few people know that I started working on visa-free travel as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009-2010. And I can emphasize that at that time many tried to slow down or make visa-free travel impossible,” Poroshenko said.
He said that one of the proposals of the Russian Federation – at that time a strategic partner of Ukraine, because there was an agreement on strategic cooperation – was the demand: “let us jointly declare to the EU that Russia and Ukraine will receive visa-free regime together.”
“And as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I said – no, we will not depend on the good or bad will of Russia, we are a European country and we have our own path to Europe. This was my public position. What happened in 2014-2015? Not only Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. In connection with the military events in Syria, military events in Libya, there was a so-called refugee crisis in Europe,” Poroshenko said.
The fifth president recalled that there are almost 5 million Syrian refugees in Europe alone and another 3 million are stuck in Turkey.
“And they told me in plain text: Mr. President, you are simply unlucky. Because no one in Europe will vote for visa-free travel for Ukraine, because it entails domestic political consequences. Because we have enough refugees in Syria for the country to be flooded with refugees from Ukraine during the war,” Poroshenko added.
The leader of Eurosolidarity noted that this was resolved through the decision of the interior ministers of the EU countries.
“To do this, we needed to complete 144 milestones, starting from integrated border management and ending with real achievements in the fight against corruption. Including cross-border corruption. And when some were skeptical about this, I publicly emphasized that we would not only receive visa-free travel, but we would receive it, a decision on visa-free travel, in 2016, and the date of its introduction in 2017,” Poroshenko said.
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