The dramatic endgame has begun in Ukraine. As the Russian and Ukrainian presidents were meeting in Donetsk, the EU withdrew its invitation to Viktor Yanukovych to visit Brussels. The Ukrainian president has hardened his stance on jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko; the EU is unsure about signing a free trade agreement with Ukraine in December; and Dmitry Medvedev has said that it’s not all about gas – there are also other values at stake. But in all this complexity, some clarity has been achieved.
At the very least, we know now that we are witnessing genuine and intense competition for Kiev, which has a choice between signing a free trade and association agreement with the EU and joining the three-nation Customs Union led by Russia, which has aspirations of expanding it into a Eurasian Union. Like it or not, Ukraine now finds itself in a zero-sum game.
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