The release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko would not help improve relations between Ukraine and the European Union, Ukraine's former Emergencies Minister, MP Viktor Baloha, has said.

"It's unnecessary to expect any breakthrough from the future EU-Ukraine summit, the holding of which still remains in question. Moreover, I think that even the release of Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko, as well as the closure of criminal cases against opposition politicians, cannot contribute to the settlement of even part of bilateral issues," he wrote in his article for the ZN.UA online newspaper.

He said that the West sees political persecutions not as mistakes and misunderstandings, but as exact evidence of Ukraine's transformation into a state, the ruling elite of which does not understand and does not accept European values.