Translated "Avante!" article by Luís Carapinha, Member of the International Department

The 4th Summit of the so-called EU Eastern Partnership assembled in Riga. As one ought to imagine, this space designation is deceitful. It was created in 2009, in order to be subordinated unto Brussels’ interests and orbit, concerning the six ex-Soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine. The omnipresent “ghost” is the Russian Federation and therefore it does not to be strange “ the strong support” the USA express towards the EU project, inserted in the North-American imperialism and the NATO powers expansionist plans towards the East. On this meeting’s outcome, which took place on the May 21 -22nd in Leetonia’s capital it is more than modest, not to mention a failure. The fracture among the directions followed by the six countries is confirmed. Armenia and Byelorussia are members of the Euro- Asiatic Economic Union, born this current year and also including Russia, Kazakhstan and Kirgyzstan. Ukraine, Moldavia and Georgia signed down association treaties (and free trade) with the EU and currently begin going through the fire of their applicability. However, in the meeting’s final statement one cannot perceive any reference concerning the “ integration in the Europe of the 28”, aimed by the three states’ class leaders. For the first time, the president of Azerbaijan was absent. Even Byelorussia was represented by a low profile official. For years, Minsk has been the target of sanctions coming from the EU (and the USA) and president Lukachenko has been part of the high officials’ list known as persona non grata among the “ communitarian space”. Brussels carries on waving the carrot, but the monochord sound demands “reforms”(… there is much work to do”). The time is a lean period. And nobody has forgotten the previous Summit’s outcome, which took place in Vilnius, at the end of 2013, and during which Ianukovich, the Ukrainian president, kept his decision in suspending his signature on the unequal and onerous agreement in association with the EU. As recalled by the Byelorussia’s representant in Riga before the Ukrainian dignitary [ during the 2013 Summit] “it was clearly told, there is the need of signing the association agreement with the EU or instead {having to}meet at “somewhere on the other side” (in Belta, 2015.05.22).

Vilnius became the forecourt of the coup that threw down the hesitant and compromised president Ianukovitch. With the Maidan, the rest of Ukraine’s sovereignty disappeared. From their post of command, the USA profited from the “European” agenda and ambitions, in order to play neo-Fascists groups pro-military moves, that for at least a decade were being organized. The president’s stepping down and the Junta’s power broke the precarious balance lines, that kept Ukraine from the capitalist restoring in the 1991 limits, deepening the economic chaos and launching the country amid a civil war. Kiev’s military defeat during the Summer and Winter campaigns, together with the dangers of a threatening bellicose escalade in Europe and the growing passive of sanctions against Russia, obliged Merkel and Hollande to come to Minsk, where a new cease-fire was negotiated, February last.

Whilst the war carries on, as a slow fire and black clouds are seen in the horizon, the EU promised in Riga a new imposition – check towards Ukraine (1.8 thousand million Euro). This amount will be delivered, drop by drop, side-by-side with the “structural reforms” hell, designed by the IMF. In Riga, the rhetoric of “the strengthening of democracy” persisted; nobody seemed to notice Kiev’s continuous and outrageous direction towards a dictatorship and primary anti-communism. Maybe the home winds will blow: within the host country, where the Communist party is forbidden, almost 300 thousand Slave from Lithonia, hold an enviable statute of non- citizens and the SS legion veterans hold an annual march.

The Riga’s Summit ought to remain as another proof of the deep, multifaceted crisis which spreads through the EU.