No deal 'so far' with Ukraine at EU-Russia tug-of-war summit

European Union leaders failed to convince Ukraine to sign a landmark political and trade deal on the first day of EU summit designed to draw six ex-Soviet states into the Western fold.

Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite told AFP that at talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanuokovych, EU "arguments did not reach Ukraine president's ear and mind. So far we see that positions have not changed."

The Ukrainian leader is to meet both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande before the two-day summit winds up on today.

The talks held symbolically in the Lithuanian capital on the EU's eastern flank was to have celebrated a five-year drive to cement ties between the 28-nation bloc and six former Soviet states in eastern Europe and the Caucasus -- Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But under mounting economic pressure from Moscow, Yanukovych a week before the gathering suspended negotiations to sign an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU.

The decision has sparked the biggest protests seen in Ukraine in a decade and a sharp East-West verbal tussle reminiscent of the Cold War era.

Grybauskaite said the EU's dozen newer member states from central and eastern Europe had tried but failed to convince Yanukovych that they had made vital political and economic progress after striking similar deals with the bloc.

In the case of such deals, the EU provides grants and aid to help countries step up to the political and economic standards of the 500-million bloc, the world's largest market.

As pro-EU Ukrainians took to the streets demanding Yanukovych side with the West and turn away from Moscow, even his arch-foe, jailed former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, said she would rather stay behind bars than see the country go East.

EU nations for their part had partly conditioned the deal to her being allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.

Her daughter Euguenia told AFP that if Yanukovych "fails to sign the agreement tomorrow, we cannot predict how people will react."

Keen to show Moscow's former communist satellites in Eastern Europe that the summit matters, almost all EU leaders were attending the two-day talks, including the "Big Three" of Britain, France and Germany.