Looking back at Russia’s annexaton of Crimea in 2014, Carl Bildt explains how the Eastern Partnership, a initiative that he and his Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski, launched in 2009, has enabled Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine – Putin’s candidates for his Eurasian Economic Union – to cooperate with the EU. The EEU makes up of ex-Soviet members as well as the central Asian "stans".

The EEU came into being a year after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. Tense relations with Russia had been exacerbated by Moscow’s support for Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Over the centuries, Georgia was the object of rivalry between Persia, Turkey and Russia, before being annexed by Russia in the 19th century. Since gaining independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia again became the arena of conflicting interests.

America’s economic and political influence in Georgia has long been a source of concern for neighbouring Russia, as have Georgia's aspirations to join NATO and the EU. The five-day conflict – fought over South Ossetia and Abkhazia – ended with Russia recognising the independence of the two separatist regions. The conflict also turned Georgia away from Russia and towards the EU, with whom it signed an association agreement in 2014. Its economy has grown robustly in recent years.

The author says, “the larger impetus behind the Eastern Partnership was that Russia’s neighbors in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus had expressed a desire for stronger ties with the EU.” And the initiative never meant to pose any “threat” to the partner countries’ existing arrangements with Russia. The six former Soviet republics, that had a free-trade agreement with Russia could have one with the EU, too.”

Critics maintain that Bildt and Sikorski were the EU's most anti-Russian and abrasive foreign ministers, pushing themselves forward as the main champions of their initiative, as Nato's hopes of getting Ukraine to join the ever-expanding Alliance were foundering. Russia was watching angrily when Ukraine sought to pivot to Brussels.

At a summit in Lithuania in 2013, Putin’s stooge in Kiev, President Viktor Yanukovych decided to shelve a political association agreement and a free-trade pact with the EU, accords that had been negotiated for six years, offering trade and financial benefits in return for democratic reforms while falling short of the economic appeal of EU membership. Yanukovych was under pressure from Russia, which wanted Ukraine to join its rival EEU.

Ukrainians took to the streets and started their Maidan protests in February 2014 that led to Yanukovych’s resignation. A few weeks later, “little green men” were deployed to Crimea and took control of the peninsula. They went on to invade eastern Ukraine in April, creating a “frozen” conflict that killed more than 13,000 people and displacing millions, taking a toll on Ukraine’s economy.

The author says the EU “deserves” some credit for standing by Ukraine, whose economy “has begun to turn a corner. And it has just held the first round of a presidential election that meets Europe’s high standards of freedom and fairness.”

Yet polls suggest that despite a complete lack of political experience, the 41-year-old comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy is due to score an overwhelming victory over the incumbent on Sunday. Petro Poroshenko won the presidency in 2014 shortly after the Maidan revolution. But many Ukrainians are disappointed by the lack of progress and have had enough of rampant corruption. They are ready to vote for Zelenskiy despite his lack of a programme, in the hope that he might shake up the system. Once again Putin will benefit from instability in Ukraine.