Ukrainian Weekly News quotes Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Senior Fellow Anders Åslund on the declaration presented at the European Union Summit, which remains unclear on the prospects of Ukrainian integration:
As expected, in the summit’s joint declaration, the European Union refrained from making clearer Ukraine’s prospects for membership, let alone offering visa-free travel regimes. For the first time, the declaration referred to “trilateral consultations” on the Ukraine-EU Free Trade Area, calling the January 1, 2016, launch date “provisional,” to the disappointment of observers.
The declaration “reads like a successful sting operation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB),” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, wrote on May 26, describing the summit as a “disaster” for Ukraine.