http://russia-insider.com/en/ukraine/2014/11/04/02-00-57pm/dozen_theories_about_whats_really_happening_ukraine_and_one_more

The unanimity of the Western media on Ukraine and the memory repression required to swallow it should make any intelligent reader suspicious. One moment MH17 is the Biggest Story Ever, the next moment there is no mention of it at all. The postponement of the Ukraine-EU agreement was unthinkable right up to the moment when it suddenly happened. NATO gets its intelligence from commercial services. An election in which parties that had got 40% of the vote the last time around were effectively banned is a triumph of democracy. The best way to end the rule of corrupt oligarchs is to pick one as president. And so on.

Therefore, there must be some other reason. Here are some theories to explain what’s going on. They are in no particular order and the reader is invited to mix and match.

1. Brzezinski has frequently said that Russia plus Ukraine equals Empire. Brzezinski is said to have great influence on Obama’s policy. So Ukraine must put into the NATO box where Russia can’t get at it.
2. Fracking is unpopular in Europe, there are said to be large deposits in eastern Ukraine; there is much money to be made.
3. The GMO theory is similar to the fracking theory, Ukraine’s black-earth area is ideal for GMO food production.
4. Frighten Europe with the “Russian threat” in order to curtail any desire for an independent foreign policy. Putin himself suspects this might be the reason.
5. The Ukrainian oligarchs had run out of things to steal, so they concocted a scheme to attract IMF money to steal by manipulating the West. In order to make the coup happen, they enlisted the neo-nazis of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda and, realising that they could be dangerous, the oligarchs started a war in eastern Ukraine so as to kill them off.
6. It’s really all about China. The aim is to frighten Europe with the “Russian threat” so that it expands defence spending and frees Washington to confront China in the Pacific.
7. See Jon Hellevig’s exposition of why the West is destined to decline and is desperate to prevent or delay that decline.
8. It’s a trap to catch a bear. If Russia openly intervenes, it can be treated as a pariah for decades; if it doesn’t, Ukraine will be a bleeding sore to weaken it for decades.
9. It’s really all about preserving the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, very important pillar of Washington’s power.
10. It’s Washington’s revenge on Moscow for preventing the attack on Syria last year.
11. The US Navy wants a base in Crimea.
12. It’s a chance to expand NATO further and keep it in business for years to come. Lots of employment and business opportunities there.

Finally, and never to be forgotten, those powerful drivers of history: stupidity and arrogance. We must recall that Obama and his advisors think Russia “makes nothing”. In short, they possess such a level of ignorance that any foolish or slapdash behaviour is to be expected.

http://russia-insider.com/en/ukraine/foreigners_are_fighting_both_sides_ukraine_theres_little_proof

Are there Russians fighting on the rebel side? Yes there are, we are also told that there are Serbs, French, Spaniards and so on. How about the other side? Well at least one American has been killed fighting on Kiev’s side and there’s a Swedish sniper. No doubt there are others. Are any of these sent by their governments? I doubt it.

There are persistent rumours that American Blackwater (now re-named Academi) are fighting for Kiev, I have seen claims that there are Polish commandos. The participation of these forces would imply involvement by their governments. But I have seen no evidence. Evidence being documents, a corpse with identification or a prisoner speaking. Believable? Yes, but no evidence. (But stay tuned: the rebels have just captured a lot of documents.)

There are many assertions that Russian soldiers and weaponry – ie serving soldiers sent by and with the approval of Moscow – are fighting in eastern Ukraine. As I have argued here, the evidence presented by NATO is nothing like what real evidence gathered by the all-seeing American intelligence assets would look like. Evidence, so laughably inadequate, in fact, that it’s negative evidence: if this is the best they have, then they obviously have nothing. Again, believable, but no evidence.

We know NATO countries are providing the Kiev forces with “non-lethal equipment” because they say they are. (“Non-lethal equipment”, by the way, is a concept designed to fool the simple-minded. There is no such thing: wars need beans, bullets and bandages; if beans are provided free of charge that leaves more money for bullets). Russia’s aid convey is an example of providing beans, just as the US provision of MREs to the Kiev side is.

From where are the rebels getting their weaponry? Well they capture quite a lot: go to this website and see for yourself (destroyed on left, captured on right). Does Russia provide weapons from its stocks? Believable, but no evidence.

And that is really all that can be said with certainty about both halves of the charge.

BELIEVABLE, BUT NO EVIDENCE

Note in February 2016: And then….. MH17 was shot down and all this changed…..

http://us-russia.org/2463-moscows-intervention-in-ukraine-a-modest-proposal.html

What set me thinking was the Guardian piece on the suffering of the people in Slavyansk and the flat out statement that the town was being routinely shelled by the Kiev forces. We all got excited about the Daily Mail piece comparing the destruction in eastern Ukraine to WW2, but it very carefully avoided naming whose fingers were on the triggers. I find it rather significant that the Guardian, the house organ of UK Russia haters, published a piece naming Kiev as the killer. It would be more its style to have another piece about how evil Putin is. But it did it. And that, to me, marks a development.

So, what is Putin trying to do in Ukraine? Well, read what he says, is my standard advice. Putin says what he means and means what he says. He does not say everything that he’s thinking, but what he says, you can take to the bank. So what is he saying about Ukraine? Diplomacy, stop the shooting, everybody should talk, come to mutual agreement; but, at the same time, Crimea is a done deal. What I understand from this is that Putin’s preferred outcome is a Ukraine (minus Crimea – done deal) that is not a problem for Moscow (which it has been for 20 years). Putin dreams of a Ukraine that pays its gas bills, a Ukraine that doesn’t have a political crisis every five or six years, a Ukraine that isn’t a NATO launch pad. Translated into English, this means that what Putin really hopes for is a Ukraine that is prosperous, happy and independent. And united (minus Crimea – done deal). He has no desire to take it over, re-build the empire or any other Brzezinski fantasy; Putin just wants a future where he doesn’t have to listen to “the latest Ukraine crisis” briefing every day. That’s it, simple, easy-peasy; read what he says; think about it. It’s not all that complicated when you think about Putin’s average day: no Ukraine crisis and only the other problems of Russia is an average day; Ukraine crisis as well as all the other problems is a terrible day.

And, truth to tell, it’s probably what most Ukrainians want too. Just a quiet life.

Many people think that Putin/Moscow should have done something earlier. The human suffering in east Ukraine is building. You Tube is full of films of dismembered bodies, burning buildings, refugees and other suffering in east Ukraine and of the atrocity in Odessa. Russians see this and demand succour; Putin has promised to protect people, nothing happens. Russian border posts are “accidentally” fired on routinely; no response.

A lot of people think Putin should have invaded or done something earlier but I believe that he has been patiently building a case in which Russia will (I think he hopes that it won’t have to but he prepares for the worst) justifiably intervene with many Europeans supporting him. The piece in the Guardian is a step in that direction as was the failed Berlin agreement. A couple of days ago France and Germany put their skin into the game and they now find that Poroshenko either has contemned them or that he is impotent to deliver what he has promised: clearly there has been no “ceasefire” at all. And that has to reflect on France and Germany whose representatives were all photographed.

So, where are we? At this moment, 2100 GMT on 5 July 2014. We see that Moscow has many times made its statements and that the Berlin agreement is in tatters; as a bonus, even the most slavish organs in the West are beginning to notice that all is Not As It Should Be.

Perhaps it is time for Moscow to intervene in order to preserve/save the Berlin agreement. To enforce the ceasefire that Kiev agreed to but is unable to enforce. To help Kiev realise its better self. As it were. So to speak.

How would Moscow intervene? Amateurs would say: tanks, invasion, “boots on the ground” and similar amateur-night blather. But what is the essence of the military problem? And how best and most economically to counter it?

The reality on the ground is that the the Kiev forces are unwilling to meet the Donbass defenders face to face. Consequently, their preferred modus operandi is to fire at long range: artillery and air strikes.

Thus I would expect (and recommend, not that the Russian MoD listens to me) that Moscow should propose a “no artillery fire into towns zone”. Any Kiev battery that fires on a town will be obliterated by MLRS, air or Iskander as appropriate. This policy should be loudly announced in advance with full reference to the ceasefire that all sides agreed to in Berlin. In other words, Moscow will enforce the Berlin agreement and assist (so to speak) Kiev in making its decision effective.

Likewise, no more “accidental” firing at Russian border posts will be allowed. Under the same penalties.

Announce once, next time action.

All this is do-able. It would be really desirable if a French or German official could be standing there when the announcement is made, but I think we are now at the point where Moscow could do this and have a certain significant percentage of Europeans supporting it.

As to Americans, well, they’re still figuring out what the 4th of July is all about.

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2014/05/the-destruction-of-ukraine.html

http://us-russia.org/2373-the-destruction-of-ukraine.html

https://www.facebook.com/ukrainiandefensenewsnetwork

http://inagist.com/all/471845273723867137/Destruction-of-Ukraine–excellent-read

JRL/2014/119/36

The Ukraine that existed last summer, was a space on the map whose boundaries were drawn by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. Not, perhaps, the people you’d pick to draw the boundaries of your country, but that’s what happened. In this space lived people who certainly regarded themselves as “Ukrainians” but also people who regarded themselves as “Russians”, “Tatars”, “Greeks”, “Hungarians” and all the other nationalities recognised by the Soviet system. The Russian Empire of 1917 had possessed much but not all of the territory known as Last Summer’s Ukraine. In particular, St Petersburg possessed most of central Ukraine as well as south and east Ukraine (a territory known as Novorossiya when the Empress Catherine re-conquered it from the Ottomans). The west was then part of the Austrian Empire. But, after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the First World War, it was taken by Poland. After the attack on Poland in 1939 Stalin incorporated it into the Ukrainian SSR. Some small territories were taken from Romania and added as well. Krushchev’s addition of Crimea rounded out the territory the world recognised as independent Ukraine in December 1991.

In simple terms, the present effect of these completely different histories of the parts of Last Summer’s Ukraine is that the south and east tend to look towards Russia while the west looks towards Europe and the centre has a certain ambivalence. And so, if you wanted to keep Last Summer’s Ukraine together, there was a central prohibition, a “First Rule of Ukraine”: “do not attempt to force a choice between east and west” or, more plainly, “do not demand that one half of the country swallow what only the other half wants”. Violate that rule and the whole thing could tear apart. Ukraine could stay together so long as, for example, no government in Kiev tried to make Ukraine a formal military ally of Russia. Such an idea would be welcomed by many in the east and south but would be anathema in the west and, to a lesser degree, in the centre. In short, the only choice for a stable Ukraine would be neutrality, or, more grandly, to proclaim itself a bridge between Russia and NATO. Likewise an exclusive trade agreement with Russia would be welcome in the south and east but unacceptable in the west. So, again, the correct stance, the one that would preserve Ukraine, would be to advocate trade agreements with both. The “bridge” concept again. Everyone who knows anything about the realities of Ukraine knew this. I can’t stress this enough: this sort of understanding would have been Lecture 1 of Ukraine 1011. So long as one half did not have the other half’s preference shoved down its throat, the two halves could rub along together. But that is precisely what the West did. Twice. The West pushed the NATO option in the so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2005 and pushed an exclusive trade deal with the EU in 2013. If one wanted to tear Ukraine apart, two more explosive issues than military alliances and exclusive trade could not be found. When last Summer’s Ukraine survived the first Western attempt to blow it up, the West tried again2, this time with trade.3

The second attempt to destroy Ukraine succeeded: Last Summer’s Ukraine will never appear on a world map again. Crimea is gone forever and, by all accounts, quite happy to be back in Russia (where, it should be noted, it was for 171 years until Khrushchev’s whimsical gift). Donetsk and Lugansk have indicated their unwillingness to follow Kiev in its present form. They will, no doubt, soon be followed by other oblasts in Novorossiya unless Kiev changes its behaviour4.

And the probabilities of Kiev changing its behaviour are, at present sight, very low; its use of the absurd word “terrorist” to describe the resistance, apart from the cringing obeisance to Washington, is all that we need to know. People with a different opinion of the constitutional structure who noted that the very first thing the new power in Kiev did was ban their language5 are not “terrorists”. Thus the end of 2014 is likely to find a good chunk of the south and east of former Ukraine either independent de facto or part of the Russian Federation. There is a very good chance that Rump Ukraine will be in civil strife – not everyone in central Ukraine is as enamoured of Stepan Bandera and the SS Galician Division as the members of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda. Added to which there will be some level of fighting along the border of Novorossiya and Rump Ukraine because the “opinion border” is not clear-cut. The economic future of Rump Ukraine is hardly brighter. Today’s Ukraine is broke, the east and south are its most productive parts; if they’re gone to independence or to Russia, then what’s left? Ukraine’s neighbours are starting to eye territory – the leaders of Hungary are speaking about the rights of Hungarophones in Ukraine; others will no doubt follow as the prospects of profit grow higher. After all, Rump Ukraine is full of bits of what were in other countries only a century ago and, if its leaders are lost in a Ukrainian super-nationalist dream, many of its inhabitants are not. In that part of the world, the Second World War was only a few moments ago and emotions set then are still strong.

Not that Rump Ukraine’s new friends are offering it much money. The USA and the EU between them have offered about as much as China is suing Ukraine for. The IMF only gives loans; and, if there is any reality to these loans, much of them will have to cover the billions Gazprom is owed . But, in reality, that money is likely gone. Gazprom understands this and, starting next month, further gas will be on a cash in advance arrangement. I am amused to see the BBC saying: “There is a danger for EU nations that Ukraine will start taking the gas Russia had earmarked for its European clients, something it did when it was cut off from Russian gas during previous disputes in 2006 and 2009.” I say “amused” because my memory last time was that the BBC was reporting on the sinister “Russian gas weapon6”; not that the Ukrainians were stealing Europe-bound Russian gas. But, and this is easy to predict: Gazprom will demand cash in advance; Kiev will promise, bluster, but pay nothing; Gazprom will cut Rump Ukraine’s share of the supplies going west; Kiev will siphon off what it needs7; Europe suffers. Will Europe this time blame Moscow? If it does, we know, thanks to the BBC’s admission, not only that it it’s lying but that it knows it’s lying. Perhaps it will “lend” Rump Ukraine the cash to pay Gazprom. Which would be ironic. In short, the West broke Ukraine, it now owns it. Or, to put it more precisely, it owns that part that Moscow doesn’t want. And what part that is is entirely up to Moscow to choose. So, an operation that may have had its origin in a desire to weaken Moscow (see Brzezinski’s argument below) has actually strengthened Moscow by adding to its territory, influence and security. And, also – this will be the next shoe to drop – adding to its influence and respect in the world8.

In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire”. And Brzezinski keeps it up today: in a March piece in the Washington Post, while managing to compare Putin with Hitler, Mussolini and a Mafia gangster, he called for full Western support for the self-appointed government in Kiev; while the West should not “threaten war”, it should assure Kiev that the “Ukrainian army can count on immediate and direct Western aid”. Apart from the fact that there is no Ukrainian Army any more, such assurances are, in fact, exactly how wars get started9. Notable in this piece is his complete disregard of the existential problem of Ukraine: namely that lots of citizens of Last Summer’s Ukraine would rather be in Russia. No doubt this First Rule of Ukraine escaped his attention in his eagerness to block Putin’s imagined desire to create a “Eurasian empire”. But, nonetheless his equation that Russia+Ukraine=Empire while Russia-Ukraine=something else (but evidently a something else no less threatening) is having an influence in Washington these days.

If Victoria Nuland and her bosses had in mind to deny Ukraine to Russia, they have completely failed. A peaceful, non-aligned, prosperous Ukraine would have been all the “barrier” they imagined Russia needed – as well as having suited Moscow perfectly. But that is gone. Russia now has Crimea (and NATO does not get the port of Sevastopol10). By the end of the year it is probable that much of Novorossiya will have seceded from Kiev; whether these bits become part of the Russian Federation is Moscow’s decision to make and Rump Ukraine will be a nightmare that the West will be expected to pay for. But the West can’t afford to prop it up. If their dream was to have Ukraine in NATO, or the EU, they are welcome to Rump Ukraine; but it will be no asset. It’s rare to hear a coup d’état plotted live so it is worth refreshing one’s memory with the Nuland-Pyatt phone call in which everything had to “stick together” and “gain altitude” before the Russians “torpedoed it”. Well, everything came unstuck and crashed to the ground without the need for a Russian torpedo. And the reason is simple: Nuland & Co ignored Ukraine 101: they wanted one half to swallow something that only the other half wanted. If the EU had allowed Ukraine, as it allows Canada, to have a trade agreement with another bloc, and had Washington kept out of it, we wouldn’t be where we are today and Last Summer’s Ukraine would still exist. There was no need for Moscow to “torpedo” anything: Nuland’s mix blew up on its own.

So what for the future? It’s already clear that Crimea is and will remain part of Russia. Lugansk and Donetsk will be independent or part of Russia (although it is not yet completely impossible that they could be in Ukraine but with real autonomy). Other eastern and southern oblasts of Last Summer’s Ukraine will join them. Rump Ukraine will be a terrible place to live, even if Pravy Sektor and Svoboda aren’t ruling it. Europe and Washington are not going to spend the money to make it anything else11. NATO is not as powerful as it likes to think: the participating European members could not bring down so insignificant an opponent as Gadaffi without American support. Who expects Washington to start a new military adventure in Ukraine? With its deficit? After so many years of war elsewhere? And Russia is not an opponent to be dealt with off stage by a few drones or aircraft sorties. There is nothing to suggest that anyone in Rump Ukraine has the stomach for real fighting: it’s one thing to murder civilians in Odessa12, quite another to take on Russian Spetsnaz. And, at that, it’s not as if Kiev’s forces are doing very well in eastern Ukraine against the local militias: while 650 casualties seems improbable, the note of triumph is not misplaced. After a month, Kiev’s effort to gain control has been a complete failure.

It will not be easy for Washington and Brussels to back themselves out of this mess they have created. Too much has been said to suddenly “discover” that the Kiev government is riddled with unpleasant characters. Or that worshippers of Stepan Bandera don’t really “share Western values”. The issue has been made into a light show of good and evil and the compliant Western media has been shouting out its assigned lines without pause13. Ukraine is too big and too close to home to forget as Libya, Kosovo and other catastrophic results of Western “humanitarian interventions” have been forgotten. Its a serious problem. And so casually started.

There is possibly one way that that Washington and Brussels can get out of this mess. If the election this week is vaguely credible, (and we may be confident that, despite the fact that one candidate has pulled out because he kept getting beaten up by Anne Applebaum’s “patriots” and another has dropped out because he sees the election as illegitimate, that the east and south have no candidate and that their political party has effectively been banned, that many areas in the east won’t vote at all and that they are under attack, that one of the two likely winners, neither of whom could be called “new”, says, if not elected, there will be a “third round of revolution”; despite all that, we may be confident that the USA, the OSCE, EU and so on will say the election was perfectly acceptable) then the winner, if it is Poroshenko, could take the only possible way out. This is, as Moscow has been saying from the beginning, a united Ukraine (minus Crimea of course – that is too late) which is not in NATO (or the Russian equivalent) and is not exclusively attached to the EU (or to the Russian equivalent). In short, a Ukraine that, as this paper began, hews to the First Rule of Ukraine: neither the one nor the other but something of each. Then – another if – if the neo-nazis can be reined in, then possibly things can get back to some sort of cautious coexistence. But – another if – the regions must be given a good deal of real autonomy14. And the final if, the most important one – Washington shuts its mouth and keeps out of the whole tortuous process of reconstructing Ukraine. A lot of ifs here and therefore a small probability but not completely impossible. Otherwise it’s more secessions – especially as the economic disasters bite – and Rump Ukraine sinking into chaos and misery.

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2013/12/ukraine-in-the-mirror-of-the-mind.html

http://us-russia.org/1957-ukraine-in-the-mirror-of-the-mind.html

http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1386390058/last-1386390058/UKRAINE+IN+THE+MIRROR+OF+THE+MIND

http://www.kingstonrohdes.com/russia-news/

http://www.blogtopsites.com/outpost/2599ddbc60851a6d1f4f1f1bcd281aa3

As the world knows, Kiev backed out of an association agreement with the European Union at the last moment, probably as a continuation of its long game of trying for a better deal by playing Moscow and Brussels against each other. This is a common strategy for “in-between” countries; it won’t work forever but, if well played, it can leverage a better end deal. If poorly played, however, it can produce nothing but bad feelings. The Kyrgyz Republic played the same game with Russia and the US over the Manas Air Base, eventually winning a better payment from the US. Egypt is doing the same today.

But such a simple explanation will not do for the anti-Russia brigade. It’s all about The Chess Masters in the Sky. And we see Kiev’s choice cast in Manichean terms: it is a “principal[led], some even say civilizational, choice between Europe and Russia, democracy and dictatorship, sovereignty and subordination, prosperity and poverty, modernity and mayhem. Indeed, the contrast between what Ukraine can expect from her Western and Eastern neighbors could not be starker.”. All this may be Gospel to most Westerners, but in Kiev they have to seriously ask themselves whether the EU is really the best path to Ukraine’s future. And, a sub-question: is last week’s offer the best we can get?

The other assumption is that it’s all Moscow’s doing. “EU leaders Friday revived Cold War rhetoric Friday, accusing Russia of bullying Ukraine into ditching a landmark deal so the former Soviet republic would stay locked in Moscow’s orbit.” (Sic and much repeated: does anybody read this stuff before re-typing it?) This Tartuffian fanfarade was soon followed in the report by real evidence for Yanukovych’s motives: “Yanukovych complained that the EU hadn’t offered enough in financial incentives to secure his signature.”. But ils ne passeront pas! “We may not give in to external pressure, not the least from Russia” said one EU “president” (there are three of them). But the assertion that Moscow made them do it is directly contradicted by many Ukrainian spokesmen: Prime Minister Azarov said the IMF’s conditions were “the last straw”; an official statement declared the EU had not paid enough attention to “Ukraine’s needs”; many feared costs would go up; concerns about Ukraine’s independence were expressed; the EU’s moralistic additional demands were rejected. Nonetheless Russia “blackmailed” Ukraine; Putin is holding the police line in Kiev; Yanukovych “gave in to Russian pressure”; it’s Russian “blackmail” and so on.

So, the established view is that wicked Russia dragged helpless Ukraine away from the light of civilisation and back into barbaric darkness. The argument is founded on the arrogant assertions 1) that the EU represents the first and Russia the second; 2) that Russian conditions are threats but European threats are conditions; 3) that Russian financial incentives are bribes but European bribes are financial incentives. This conceit could not be more baldly put than in this New York Times editorial: “Europe’s use of trade leverage to encourage democracy is constructive and reasonable. Russia’s attempts to bludgeon former vassals into continued economic dependence are not.” In truth 1) the direction is not so obvious from Kiev in 2013; 2) are consequences of choosing one and not the other; 3) Kiev wants money. Kiev has a hard decision to make especially since Brussels refuses Kiev what it recently allowed Ottawa: a foot in two camps. (Vide Armenia).

Well, maybe 20 years ago, when the EU had a future and Russia did not, Kiev’s choice would have been easy. But that’s not the way it looks today. I invite the reader to consider the figures given by Mark Adomanis (who adheres to the curious practice of discussing such issues with facts rather than assuming the answers). The EU’s GDP/capita has been flat for a decade and its unemployment rate is getting worse. Russia, during the same time, is getting steadily better in both respects (yes, from a lower base than the EU but a higher one than Ukraine. Which is what is relevant in the circumstances). The economic part of the choice is by no means so obvious. The values part of the choice is not so obvious either to a country not enamoured with the latest European human rights diktats.

The next observation to be made is that all this is rather contemptuous of Ukraine whose leaders who are assumed to have no will of their own. Of course we have seen this common trope of the anti-Russia lobby before. The Ossetia war, for example, was described as between Russia and the West – Georgians were pawns and the Ossetians not even mentioned. From the viewpoint of “stratospheric analysis” there are no small players; indeed there are always only two players; the others are mere pieces moved by The Chess Masters in the Sky. But, in the actual world they are actors and good analysis should take their calculations into account. One would have thought that the collapse of the “Orange Revolution” and “Rose Revolution” would have taught somebody something about what pawns feel about their pre-arranged futures.

Ukraine is a divided country: I speak of “Russian Ukraine” and “Polish Ukraine” to conveniently describe its two different influences. And, as long as people are not willing to let Ukraine be what it actually is – part of each – these divisions will be perpetrated and strengthened. First the West demanded it join NATO – although few in Ukraine actually wanted to; now it demands that it turn its back on Russia and become the EU’s next reserve of cheap labour and cheap real estate. But Ukraine faces both ways: it is unnatural to expect it to face only one way. It didn’t work during the so-called “Orange Revolution”, why would it work any better today? Especially since the Western option is much less attractive now than it was then. And, after government replacements in Greece and Italy and bank raids in Cyprus, who can honestly say that the sovereignty cost for Ukraine would be higher in the Customs Union?

Amusingly, what is missing in these spins of Russia the bully trying to hold onto its crumbling empire is the fact that Moldova and Georgia did sign agreements with the EU at the Vilnius summit. But how could that have happened? How is it that Moscow’s “bullying” only works on its biggest neighbour but not on its smaller ones?

It surely couldn’t be that Kiev quit the agreement for its own reasons, could it?

In all likelihood, the game is not over and Kiev is calculating its next move in its attempts to leverage money out of Moscow or Brussels, or both; Yanukovych is back talking to Brussels.