Ukraine is a vital link for Europe: our energy transportation networks; our location between the European Union and Eurasia. We're the melting pot of Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. The democracy we founded with the Orange Revolution has to be an example for other post-Soviet states.

My goal in politics from the very beginning has been, and will be, the goal of giving Ukraine a chance to finally secure a firm footing in the world as a competitive, independent and real European state.

I know the Russian political elite has got used to the Ukraine suffering from an inferiority complex, but I want this to disappear from our relationship.

We will fight and defend my good name in the European court. We have to be strong and defend Ukraine from this authoritarianism.

I will get to the truth, if not in Ukrainian courts, then in international ones. I will fight to my last breath. They want to put me in prison but that won't help. My voice will be heard even louder from prison than now, and the whole world will hear me.

Yanukovych has changed everything in Ukrainian jails - real criminals have been released, while representatives of the middle class and politically rebellious free-minded people have filled the prisons.

The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.