The EU is waiting for a difficult meeting with the Eastern partners23.05.2015

The European leaders begin on Thursday a tense meeting with their neighbors from the former Soviet republics, which will be overshadowed by the ongoing confrontation with Russia, which began with a similar summit two years ago.

Disagreements over the conflict in Ukraine and the unwillingness of the EU to offer the prospect of EU membership to six countries of the "Eastern Partnership" stagnated the writing of a joint agreement to be approved on Friday in Riga, diplomats said.

"These are difficult negotiations", - said a European diplomat on the basis of discussions in Brussels on the draft declaration, which is reviewed in Latvia by the foreign ministers of the EU, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.

The success of the summit will depend on what expressions and terms the meeting participants will countersign in the modest and mainly technical arrangements which they have achieved, and "how they will be regarded in Moscow."

Armenia and Belarus refused to sign up to any application where the Russian annexation of the Crimea is called illegal, and European diplomats said they will be offered a compromise.

On Wednesday, Azerbaijan, against whom the West stepped up criticism of the human rights violations, has announced that its president Ilham Aliyev will not attend the first summit of the "Eastern Partnership".

Offering the states on the eastern flank trade cooperation opportunities and assistance in the hope of forming stable democracies, the European Union found itself in the most acute crisis since the Cold War, when during the summit at the end of 2013 in Vilnius it was going to sign an agreement with Ukraine on trade.

Kremlin regarded this move as a geopolitical ploy, arranged to divert his biggest ally in the post-Soviet space.

The refusal of Viktor Yanukovych, then the president of Ukraine, to make a deal with the EU in Vilnius, led supporters into the streets of Kiev's pro-Western policies and led to the bloody revolution that Russia called a fascist coup and used as a pretext for the seizure of the Crimea, as well as support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Before the summit, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin said that he is waiting from EU assurances that Ukraine will become a candidate for membership in the European Union and its citizens the next year will have the right to visa-free travel to EU countries.

"We want to see light at the end of the tunnel", - he said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.

Last year, Ukraine and Moldova and Georgia, which also want to join the EU, signed political and trade agreements with the European Union.