He and his people may now be paying a terrible price. But there was no way that poking the Russian bear like this, with such silly boasts as David Cameron’s declaration that he wished to see “Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals”, would not arouse just such a reaction. As I wrote last March, the EU’s reckless bid to absorb Ukraine will eventually be seen as as much an act of fateful self-delusion as its equally reckless launch of the euro.