Gambling and bargain with Putin humiliates Europe

The visit of Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Federal President of Germany, begins today in Ukraine.

It’s an important event for our relations.

However, it is an occasion for a frank exchange.

A few recent events in the relations between some European capitals and Moscow have raised our concerns and should be clarified.

The most important question relates to the commercialization of values ​​that have always been associated with our leading partners in Europe.

Ukraine has the right to raise the matter.

It seems difficult for us to interlink the values ​​of the United Europe with the intentions of the German colleagues to launch the North Stream-2 project with Putin's Russia.

This project has never been a commercial one. This is a project of geopolitical corruption on the part of Russia, which can cause an irreparable damage to the strategic interests of the whole Europe.

It is no less difficult for us to witness the friendly character and encouraging gestures that President of France Emmanuel Macron demonstrated recently in St. Petersburg at the conversation with the murderer on whose hands are the lives of the passengers of the MH17 flight and more than 10,000 innocent Ukrainians.

We would like to be told by our partners how to perceive the multi-billion dollar investment of the French Total company in the Russian economy?

We would also like to know what President Macron had in mind when said that "he recognizes the role that Russia has built for itself both in its immediate environment and in some other regions of the world."

Is that for real?

Did the world really hear the words about "the recognition of the role of Russia"? What Russia's role exactly has the world to recognize, and, apparently, to accept? The role of the killer, slaughterer and invader?

How should we understand the words of the French President that the "ball" is in Ukraine’s court too?

Indeed?

And if there are the answers to these questions, we would like to hear the reaction to a number of others.

What are the values ​​that are being supported by German and French investments in the Russian economy?

How do such actions correspond to the sanctions policy of the West against the state that deliberately violates international norms and principles?

Will this help to influence on the President Putin's regime? Will it stop Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the West?

Will it help stop the repressions against Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in the territories occupied by Russia, and to release Oleg Senotsov and other prisoners?

Will it bring democracy and common sense to Russia?

I very much doubt that such policy would help.

But I have no doubt that the truth is on the side of Ukraine.

United Europe is not a project of business and commercial interests for the Ukrainian people.

For us, United Europe is the values ​​and principles that we want to achieve.

I want to believe that our partners understand my point.

Gambling and bargain with Putin is not only a dramatic miscalculation, it is a humiliation for Europe.

It undermines the very foundations of the European security - the security Ukraine is protecting now.