Ukrainians on Sunday celebrated first day of visa-free travel to most European Union countries.
President Petro Poroshenko has been welcomed as a final ‘goodbye’ to the Russian empire’. This was stated by Ambassador of Ukraine in Pakistan Volodymyr Lakomov.
He said that now Ukrainian citizens who had biometric passports could enter all EU member states except Ireland and the United Kingdom without a visa for up to 90 days during any 180-day period, said a press release here.
The ambassador said that visa would be necessary for four Schengen area countries that were not in the EU including Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Volodymyr Lakomov said, ‘The visa-free regime for Ukraine has started, glory to Europe, glory to Ukraine’, adding Poroshenko wrote on Twitter after hundreds of Ukrainians crossed the EU border.
‘It will create new opportunities for all of us, strengthening our economies, or security, and our friendship’, he said. ‘And this is what our partnership is all about: making a difference to our citizens’ everyday life’. The ambassador said that Ukrainians will be able to travel to 33 countries of West Europe without any visa requirements.
He said that the visa-free regime was ‘just the first step’ toward ‘intensifying relations between the EU and Ukraine. ‘The decision of the EU is so important, a long process has been completed, first of all, it goes about the return of Ukraine to its historic place among the European countries, not only about the visa-free border crossing’, he added.
