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EU should de-escalate Ukraine tensions, say leaders at Bratislava security conference

15 May 2014 01:06 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The European Union's (EU) future steps in Ukraine should be to deescalate the situation and possibly use connections in Russia to assist the country, world leaders said on Wednesday at ongoing Global Security Forum (GLOBSEC) in Slovakia, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edgars Rinkevics stated there were different views on what solutions should be promoted in Ukraine. In his opinion, Europe is still taking baby steps in developing an official strategy on objectives it wants to achieve.

Rinkevics' Hungarian counterpart Janos Martonyi believed that Ukrainian citizens needed to also take certain steps. "Our objective should be receiving the full consensus of the Ukrainian citizens," he said.

Oleh Rybachuk, chairman and co-founder of the Centre Ukraine stated: "If Europe stays undivided and Ukraine stays undivided, we have a chance for a brighter future."

He further expressed the need for pro-government Ukrainians to have a strong partner in the west who would offer them security.

Timothy Snyder, a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Science in Vienna, Austria, added that due to the separatism movement in eastern Ukraine, ethnic Ukrainians were strengthening their positions.

The GLOBSEC 2014 in Bratislava will host multiple panels and speakers discussing the current situation in Ukraine.