Oligarchs Give Ukraine's President Crucial Support In EU Drive

Oligarchs Give Ukraine's President Crucial Support In EU Drive:

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EU President Belgian Herman Van Rompuy (center) and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (right) welcome Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych ahead of an EU-Ukraine Summit in Brussels earlier this year.

As Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych forges ahead with his bid to bring his divided country closer to the European Union, he is getting support from a surprising source -- many of the country's leading oligarchs.

According to Borys Kolesnykov, a lawmaker from Yanukovych's Party of Regions and one of the 50 richest Ukrainians according to "Forbes" magazine, support for EU integration is almost universal among the country's economic elite.

"There can't be any groups that don't support European integration..." he says. "The stronger the competition is, the more quickly Ukrainian enterprises will develop [and] if there hadn't been the Kyiv Dynamo [soccer team] in the 1990s, then [Donetsk] Shaktar wouldn't have been so good. Competition stimulates quality.""

'via Blog this'