Can there have been any great international drama in which Western politicians have more completely stood reality on its head than the unending crisis over Ukraine, which is yet again creeping back into the headlines?

There was only ever one reason why the tragedy tearing Ukraine apart first erupted as it did in the winter of 2013/14: the hubristic itch of the EU, backed by the United States, to absorb Ukraine into its own ever-enlarging empire.

For this, the West was happy to see an elected pro-Russian Ukrainian president ousted in a coup d’état by an unelected stooge favourable to the EU. It was wholly predictable that the Russian-speakers of Crimea and eastern Ukraine would prefer to be ruled by their fellow Russians in Moscow, rather than by some weird form of government in faraway Brussels that they didn’t begin to understand.