#EU #Visa-Slams #Ukrainians After February 2014 #Ukrainian #Coup

By Eric Zuesse

Although the coup in Ukraine in February 2014 was allegedly done in order to get Ukraine into the European Union (because the overthrown President Viktor Yanukovych had just before declined the EU’s offer for Ukraine to join the EU), European countries are now denying Ukrainians visas even more than they had been doing before the coup and its follow-on Association Agreement with the EU. 

Ukraine’s independent European Integration website headlined on July 21st, “The Percentage of Refusals Increased,” and reported that, “Of the 22 countries in the Schengen area [the countries where visas are not required], 16 increased the percentage of refusals of entrance to Ukrainians as compared to the year 2013,” which was the final year prior to the coup.

Furthermore: “Switzerland and Finland denied visas to Ukrainians at a rate three times higher than in 2013, and Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sweden denied visas almost twice as much as in 2013.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin “admitted: Some consulates deliberately do not give visas to

Ukrainians, even when they are eligible.”

The same website had reported on June 26th that they were informed, “Most of the people who are affected by this live outside Kiev and the other major cities. … I fear it will lead to increased numbers of forged papers from those areas.”

On July 15th, the website quoted Klimkin at a meeting of Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on European integration, saying, “Some countries pretend that everything remains as it was before, but against the background of internal pressure [to block more Ukrainians from visiting] they change the visa practice.” That report quoted Klimkin saying he is “now putting pressure on these consulates and capitals, demanding they return to the previous practice.”

The report on July 21st discussed what might be causing these increased refusals: “Why are Ukrainians denied visas? On this, we asked our expert Visa-free diary editor, … Sergei Sidenko:

‘The problem of increasing the number of refusals last year was a response to the events in the East [especially the region that had voted 90%+ for Yanukovychand rejected the coup-imposed government, and where the new Ukrainian government responded by bombing that region]. Some countries are suspicious of Ukrainians generally, but especially of people who live near the conflict-zone, suspicious that they’ll take advantage of tourist visas and ask for asylum.’”

The EU hadn’t been very eager for Ukraine to join it, but Ukraine’s joining the EU had long been a goal of American Presidents in order to isolate and weaken Russia, and especially President Obama planned for this, and made the changes in his Administration right after the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, in order to carry it out, such as by promoting Victoria Nuland to run European affairs, and transferring Geoffrey Pyatt to the Kiev Embassy to become the man on the ground coordinating it. The fractious EU has gone along with Obama’s plan, and (except for Netherlands), wasn’t involved with planning and perpetrating the coup. This is the reason why there still is considerable ambivalence within Europe as to whether or not Ukraine should ever be admitted into the EU: the U.S. is more eager for that to happen than the EU itself is. The EU’s leaders were even shocked to find out that Yanukovych had been overthrown by a coup. Only after the fact did it become “the most blatant coup in history,” because of the many leaks (such as the ones linked to here at “shocked to find out” and “coordinating it”). It was entirely a U.S.-run operation.