Regarding the paramount importance of the Ukrainian Presidential Election scheduled for this Sunday, European Green Party Co-Chair Reinhard Bütikofer, says:
“While around 400 million citizens of the EU are being asked to cast their vote in the election for the European Parliament between Thursday and Sunday, the Ukrainian people are facing their own election. It can be called the “other European Election”, because it was the European ambitions expressed at the Euromaidan that led to this election, and because it’s outcome will have a huge impact on the future stability, peace and unity of Europe.
“The European dreams of millions of Ukrainian citizens created the initial motivation that resulted in the downfall of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych‘s authoritarian regime. The aggressive Russian reaction to these European dreams led to the present Ukrainian crisis. The idea of one Europe, whole, free and at peace has come under strong pressure from two fronts over the last six months.
“A weird alliance of populist and extremist political forces inside the EU are trying to use the European elections to undermine and reverse the process of European integration. Externally President Putin has pursued a foreign policy that is obviously directed against further European integration as envisioned by the EU and a couple of other European countries that are not EU members. No wonder that the right wing anti-Europeans inside the EU and the revisionists from Moscow are each other’s close allies.
“On 25 May the Greens are looking forward to a result in both ‘European’ elections that will sustain and revive our shared European dream: a successful Presidential Election in Ukraine that shows the Ukrainian people want to pursue their own destiny independently, and a successful European Election that rejects the nationalist challenge to European unity.”
