United in Disagreement: Perceptions of the EU in Ukraine

On 29 November 2013, at the Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Vilnius, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych addressed the European community with a statement calling for ‘the forced break in the process of concluding the [Association] Agreement’ (President of Ukraine 2013e). 1 He said this despite a week of lasting protests that were taking place throughout Ukraine under the name of Euromaidan . The protests initially emerged when thousands of people came to the central squares of Ukrainian cities in response to the government’s announcement that it would ‘suspend the process of preparing to conclude the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU’ (Government 2013). What started as an unprecedented demonstration for closer ties with the European Union (EU) and resulted in over a hundred deaths, and the ousting of the corrupt government indicates the exceptional place of the EU in the perceptions among Ukrainians for their struggles for a better future. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.