Suspension of EU-Ukraine AA signing wasn’t spontaneous, PM says

The government's decision to postpone the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was not spontaneous, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said in interview with "Segodnya" Ukrainian daily.

"We had dozens of round-table meetings with the International Monetary Fund, hoping that we will find a solution acceptable to the country. We hoped that with the help of the IMF we will be able to solve the problems of the budget deficit, economic modernization, to pay huge amounts of money to "Gazprom" for gas," he said.

According to the PM, he led such negotiations until the last minute. "I could not publicly state that we close this topic and turn in another direction. However, nobody made us advances, and even a few days before the decision to stop the association we had received a letter from the IMF: it was much tougher than any of their previous requirements. After that, it became clear that European (and not only) partners would not help us," Azarov said.