Mission Ukraine ─ The 2012-2013 Diplomatic Effort to Secure Ties With Europe

On a frigid February night in Kiev in 2013, former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski turned to his friend Pat Cox, the former president of the European Parliament, and said: “Don’t worry, Pat. They’ve got a lot of empty space on this square—an ideal location to put up statues of you and me.” Over a year and a half, Kwasniewski and Cox visited Ukraine 27 times, spending total of 80 days there negotiating the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which would allow Ukraine to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. The Cox-Kwasniewski mission was part of the EU’s final, all-out effort to save the Agreement and give millions of Ukrainians the hope of a European future. After an intricate political game of chicken between the European Union and Victor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president, Yanukovych swerved at the last second. Ukrainians took to the streets and the wave of civil unrest was born.

Between 2008 and 2012, Maciej Olchawa served as a policy adviser on Ukraine in the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, and the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. His articles have appeared in several academic journals as well as in The Diplomat and The Huffington Post. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.