Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he expects the EU to extend sanctions on the Russian Federation at its June summit.
"Much attention has been paid [at a recent meeting with President of the European Council Donald Tusk] to the continuation of the sanctions, and our work that has been done in recent months gives us grounds for optimism – not even for restrained optimism, but for [realistic] optimism that sanctions against the Russian Federation over the failure to implement the Minsk agreements [on Donbas, eastern Ukraine] will definitely be extended at on the June summit of the European Union," Poroshenko told journalists after a meeting with Tusk in Brussels on Monday.
Earlier that day, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Brussels that Ukraine was ready to give up on the Minsk agreements in the event some European states succeed in lifting the sanctions pressure from the Russian Federation at the Council of Europe.