'Overwhelming majority' of EU countries against Ukraine sanctions

BRUSSELS - An “overwhelming majority” of EU countries believe the time is not right to impose sanctions on Ukraine.

Lithuanian, Polish and Swedish ambassadors repeated their country’s calls for EU sanctions on Ukraine at a meeting of the bloc’s Political and Security Committee in Brussels on Thursday, EU sources say.

But the rest followed Germany’s line that EU diplomacy should concentrate on stopping violence instead.

“The overall assessent is that at this stage precedence should be given to diplomatic engagement,” one EU contact noted.

“There was overwhelming support for engagement. The situation is not black and white. It’s very complex and we have to take things forward in a way to end violence, so that no more people are killed,” the contact said.

The source explained that Ukraine is split between western Ukraine, where there is greater support for the opposition, and eastern Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych’s heartland, where he still has support.

“The solution must meet the aspirations of all the people,” the EU contact added.

The internal EU debate comes amid renewed threats by Yanukovych’s security chiefs to use force.

"The events of the last days in the Ukrainian capital have shown that our attempts to solve the conflict peacefully, without recourse to a confrontation of force, remain futile," interior ministry Vitaliy Zakharchenko said in a statement on Saturday.

Zakharchenko has direct control over special police units and gendarmes and has the authority to issue them with firearms.

Mark Galeotti, a US expert on security in former Soviet countries, told this website that if he does, the confrontation could easily spiral.

“In the heat of the moment, if an armed policeman is facing molotov cocktails, people equipped with weapons, they might use live ammunition,” he said.

Zakharchenko statement comes after opposition activists occupied municipal buildings in towns in western Ukraine, highlighting the political divisions in the country.

It also comes amid EU commissioner Stefan Fuele’s meetings with Yanukovych and with people at the protest camp, or Euromaidan, in central Kiev on Friday and Staurday.

He said in a communique on Saturday: “I have discussed a series of steps to this end, that could lead to confidence building and to a political process aimed at ending this crisis.”

His officials decline to say what the “steps” might be.

But he noted that EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton will also visit Kiev next week to show that: ”The EU would remain engaged in this process assisting them in de-escalating the situation.”

In wider diplomacy, top EU officials will discuss the Ukraine crisis at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Brussels on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azaraov, a hardline Yanukovych supporter, has tried to defend the regime’s actions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

But, in a sign of international opprobrium following the murders of six opposition activists last week, the Davos organisers declined to let him enter the congress venue.

He told the FT in an interview from his hotel that outside “provocateurs” carried out the killings.

He also blamed a hardcore of 1,500 or so “ultra-nationalists, xenophobes and anti-semites” in Kiev city centre for causing last week’s clashes with Zakharchenko riot police, or Berkut.