Over a thousand people gathered in a spontaneous demonstration, chanting “Ukraine is Europe”, on the evening of 21 November in Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Kiev’s Independence Square. They were prepared to spend the night there, to create a “second Maidan”. The first was nine years ago, on 22 November 2004, when tents were pitched by the civil protest movement that became the Orange Revolution. Then, as now, Viktor Yanukovych was the target of the protesters, only this time it was not over rigged elections. “The government has decided to abandon all the preparatory work for the Association Agreement with the European Union, which should have been signed in Vilnius in a few days’ time,” said a student at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev. “Instead, Yanukovych has asked his ministers to increase collaboration with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the successors to the former USSR.”

Ukraine had negotiated its agreements within the framework of the Eastern Partnership, launched in 2009 to encourage the six post-Soviet republics to draw closer to the EU through ambitious agreements with considerable political, institutional and economic repercussions. Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus have hardly advanced in their negotiations, but Georgia and Moldavia have long made European integration a priority, and are currently initialling their agreements.

Ukraine had passed that first stage in March 2012 and was on the point of signing the final treaty at the Vilnius summit on 28 and 29 November. In fact Ukraine was the heavyweight in the partnership. With its population of 46 million, the country represents an economic, agricultural and energy goldmine for European investors and analysts. Studies forecast that opening up this new free-trade area would lead to new growth prospects through production structure modernisation and the cleaning up of the business sector. According to Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Ukraine “has lost a great deal” by refusing to sign.

The restructuring required in industry and services, and growing competition from European products, have obliged Ukraine to make substantial efforts to adapt — that is, demand sacrifices from the Ukrainians without providing their country with any significant financial compensation. The official justification for abandoning negotiations was based on the need to “secure the country’s economy”.

“These Association Agreements reflect a kind of colonial attitude in the sense that radically different countries are treated in an identical fashion,” said a western diplomat in Kiev who wished to remain anonymous. “Asking them to adapt to EU standards and open up their markets is far more advantageous for European investors than it is for Ukrainian businesses.” The EU has also lost a great deal.

Oscar for politics

Ukraine’s refusal to sign is a diplomatic setback for Brussels. Ukraine is the cornerstone of regional geopolitics, and without it the prospects are bleak for the Eastern Partnership, with its concurrent Europeanisation and stabilisation of the EU’s eastern borders. “The Oscar for politics has to go to Vladimir Putin,” said former president Viktor Yushchenko. Putin sees Kiev as the historical and spiritual cradle of Russia and he openly disapproves of any closer ties with Brussels. He provided Yanukovych with many incentives to join the customs union being formed by Russia with Belarus and Kazakhstan, the starting point of a vast Eurasian Union to be created by 2015. Ukraine entering into a free-trade zone with the EU, which would have happened had the agreement been signed, is incompatible with Putin’s project.

Russia has promised substantial rewards to Ukraine in exchange for alignment with Moscow. It also increased warnings about possible conflicts over gas and finance as well as ethnic and cultural issues. Russia has banned Ukrainian chocolate since July and implemented a general blockade of Ukrainian products in August. At the time Sergei Glazyev, one of Putin’s advisors, made it clear that strict controls would be deployed permanently if Ukraine took the “suicidal decision” to sign the agreement. “Everyone knows that the Kremlin considers Ukraine to be key to its Eurasian integration project,” said Volodymyr Oliynyk, MP for the Party of Regions, which has a majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. “But it is uncivilised to act that way with a partner.”

Yanukovych may have permanently compromised Ukraine’s European prospects, yet he is not on the point of joining the customs’ union so dear to Putin. “The president and the oligarchs, the Donetsk clan [after a town in eastern Ukraine] are economic nationalists. They don’t want to abandon their sovereignty to the EU or to Russia,” said Taras Kuzio, a Ukrainian expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “They would like to live in a pre-globalisation country, free of interference from both Moscow and Brussels.” Over the past few months the Family, as those close to the authoritarian Yanukovych are known, has consolidated its hold on the country and is trying to prevent any economic, political or legal power from challenging that hold.

According to Kuzio, the prevarications around Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister imprisoned since 2011 for abuse of power, are the result of “doublethink”. This allows the executive powers in Ukraine to dither between Brussels and Moscow, avoiding core issues that blight the country. In Kiev, the line between national autonomy and isolationism is blurred.