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'Ukraine should put economy before revenge'

PR dla Zagranicy
Joachim Ciecierski 25.02.2014 10:21
Poland's prime minister has warned Ukrainians against taking revenge on their deposed president Viktor Yanukovych.
PAP Radek PietruszkaPAP Radek Pietruszka

Instead, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged the interim government to focus on the country's faltering economy.

Ukraine issued an arrest warrant on Monday for Yanukovych over the "mass murder" of protesters and appealed for $35 billion (25 billion euros) in Western aid to pull the crisis-hit country from the brink of economic collapse.

"The greatest challenge facing Ukraine today is not taking revenge, but saving the Ukrainian economy and public finances," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Bialystok, eastern Poland.

"If the revolution is to bear good fruit, then it can't be based on the idea of revenge," Tusk said, adding that Kiev would have to be well prepared to absorb any aid package from the West.

"It can't be the case that those resources would be squandered by a corrupt government, or by oligarchs."

The foreign ministers of EU members the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - three of which share a border with Ukraine -- meanwhile voiced "their strong interest" in maintaining Ukraine's territorial integrity and urged "all actors to refrain from any actions that could undermine this".

The nation of 46 million people risks splintering as tensions flare in its Russian-speaking east over the power transfer in more pro-European western regions. International "macroeconomic assistance" would be "a key aspect of the consolidation process", the ministers said in their joint statement Monday. (ko)

AFP/iar/

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