Ukraine and the European Union: West or east? | The Economist

Ukraine and the European Union: West or east? | The Economist:

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ITS very name means “borderland”. Ukraine has long been on the edge between east and west. Now this country of 46m people is poised to tilt westward by signing an association agreement with the European Union next month that also promises freer trade. But Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is putting pressure on Ukraine instead to join Belarus and Kazakhstan in a Eurasian customs union that has become his pet project.

The Russian sales pitch is simple. Russia remains the single biggest market for Ukrainian exports. Ukraine would get cheaper gas (Belarus, which has also sold its gas distributor to Russia’s Gazprom, pays less than half as much). Russia would ease the country’s huge debt burden, much of it owed to Gazprom. Mr Putin was also the main backer of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, in November 2004, when his rigged election was overturned in the orange revolution. Most alluring of all, the Russians, unlike the EU, would not make pesky demands for human rights, the rule of law, an end to corruption and a proper democracy."

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