Yulia Tymoshenko: Ukraine is Europe

Prime Minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko believes Ukraine’s main foreign policy priority should be membership in the European Union.

"My guiding principle for Ukraine’s foreign policy is very concise: 'EU-YES'. We are an organic, historical, geographical and cultural part of Europe. We do not need to return to Europe, because we never mentally left it. Ukraine is Europe, and Europe will have to reckon with this fact," Yulia Tymoshenko said in an interview in the Lviv newspaper "Express."

According to the Prime Minister, the issue of Ukraine’s full integration into European structures is only a matter of time. "And this time isn’t measured in decades. I think that Ukraine will become a full-fledged member of the European Union very soon."

She recalled that "when Europe was only getting up on its feet, Kyiv already had Europe's largest library, and alumni of medieval Ukrainian universities "were valued as much as graduates of Harvard and Oxford today. We are Europeans."

At the same time she stressed that as the head of government she protects Ukraine’s national interests in relations with Russia. "Nobody has the right to tell us what to do in our own home," the Prime Minister noted.