Ukraine has no option but to join the European Union eventually, and the bloc should say so to help the country's leaders continue long-term reforms, Kiev's ambassador to Moscow said Monday.
"We are a European country, our place is in Europe," Konstyantyn Gryshchenko said in Brussels on the eve of an E.U.- Ukraine summit in Evian, France.
Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko and his foreign minister are due to attend the summit along with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, whose country holds the E.U.'s rotating presidency.
"I don't know what kind of options we have," he said during a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund. "A country of 46 million cannot be without options."
Commenting on the current political crisis back home, which has pitted Yushchenko against Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and which threatens to topple the country's coalition government, Gryshchenko said it reflected a "live democracy."
Relations between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have recently deteriorated, with the presidency accusing Tymoshenko of "high treason" for allegedly siding with Moscow over the conflict in Georgia, a charge the prime minister denied.
The Ukraine ambassador said while giving his country firm hopes of E.U. membership wouldn't solve its problems at a stroke, a "European perspective" would nevertheless be "a pole around which Ukrainians can agree on certain long-term programs."
The Evian summit has taken on greater importance in light of the conflict between Georgia and Russia and the threat it poses to other ex-Soviet areas with significant Russian populations, such as the Ukraine peninsula of Crimea.
Many analysts have called for a strong signal from the E.U. to Ukraine, to show Moscow that Europe isn't going to allow it to control unwilling areas of its former Soviet empire.
However in a draft summit statement, the fruit of a difficult compromise between the 27 E.U. nations, there is no mention of the sought-after "European perspective."
The E.U. does however make one gesture towards Kiev, calling a partnership deal being negotiated with Ukraine an "association agreement" - the term used for countries which do have a recognized future within the bloc.
The E.U. nations also recognize Ukraine is a European country which shared a common history and values.
Poland and the Baltic countries, as well as Sweden and the U.K., have always insisted Ukraine is a European nation and therefore deserves a place at the table. But the nations of 'Old Europe,' led by Germany, are opposed, amid concerns about continued enlargement, and also about irritating Russia.