KIEV, Aug. 22 – The arrest of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko may have been masterminded by “forces” seeking to avert Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, a senior official at President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration said Monday.

Hanna Herman, the top policy advisor to Yanukovych, did not identify the forces, but suggested the plan may have been to “weaken the government” and to push Ukraine in an opposite direction from the EU.

“The whole idea of this story is very simple: to change Ukraine’s pro-European direction towards the opposite direction,” Herman said at a press conference.

Although Herman did not name the opposite direction, many understand that this would be Russia.

Herman drew parallels with a scandal in 2003 when then-President Leonid Kuchma’s bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko had accused Kuchma of selling sophisticated radars, Kolchuga, to Iraq.

The allegations had never been confirmed, but had seriously deteriorated Ukraine’s relations with the US at the time. Some politicians later questioned Melnychenko’s close ties with Russia’s security services.

“I think that the Yulia Tymoshenko story is very well used by those forces that had wanted to repeat the Kolchuga story,” Herman said.

This is the first time that a senior Ukrainian officials has suggested the possible link between Tymoshenko’s arrest and the attempts to reverse the country’s foreign policy.

Tymoshenko is tried for negotiating a controversial natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009 as a result of which Ukraine is paying some of the highest gas prices in Europe. Russia has repeatedly said that the agreement was signed in accordance with both countries’ legislation and cannot be changed.

The developments come amid cooling of relations between Ukraine and Russia over poor progress made in natural gas talks.

Russian leaders, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly called on, or even threatened, Ukraine to change its foreign policy towards greater cooperation with Moscow.

Putin, for example, promised up to $9 billion in annual savings from cheaper natural gas if Ukraine abandons talks with the EU and joins Russia-led Customs Union, which also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The failure to change the policy would force Russia to retaliate and introduce prohibitive trade barriers against many Ukrainian goods, Putin said.

Ukraine planned to sign a free trade and political association agreement with the EU before the end of the year, but the Tymoshenko arrest may have delay the process.

“I have one hope that the West begins to understand that the European integration is important for Ukraine,” Herman said. “One cannot put the fate of one person, even if this is a distinguished and good person as Yulia Volodymyrivna, against the fate of the country, against the direction where the country is moving.” (tl/ez)