UKRAINE-TYMOSHENKO-TEIXEIRA-EXPLANATION

Kyiv, June 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira has not recently asked the leadership of the Kachanivska penal colony in Kharkiv to allow him to meet with Ukraine’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is currently in Ukrzaliznytsia’s Central Clinical Hospital No. 5.

“Mr. Teixeira has not recently addressed the leadership of Kachanivska Penal Colony No. 54 with a request to get permission to meet with Tymoshenko. There were no statements from him ahead of his last visit to Ukrzaliznytsia’s Central Clinical Hospital, which the head of the EU delegation made last Sunday,” the press office of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine reported on Monday.

As reported, on June 17, Teixeira was not allowed to see Tymoshenko in hospital.

“A month ago, the government said that it was necessary for her [Yulia Tymoshenko] to invite me. She invited me on May 15, but the last time they [government officials] told me that I was no longer the EU ambassador to Ukraine. I’m still here and I’ll be here until September [holding the post of the EU's ambassador to Ukraine], so I do not understand the reasons for refusal,” he told reporters outside the building of the hospital on Sunday.

He said that he could only climb the 9th floor of the hospital and talk to security guards near Tymoshenko’s ward. The EU ambassador said that security guards told him that a letter to the ex-prime minister must be passed to the Kachanivska penal colony, in which the ex-prime minister is serving her sentence and where she was held before hospitalization.

Teixeira also noted that he could not get permission to meet with the former prime minister since her arrest, for almost ten months, while other members of the European Parliament are given such permission.

[UA EUROPE EEU EMRG POL]

PA

16:44:14 EET-2