You're reading: The Economist: Politics of brutal pressure

One can always count on Ukrainian governments to renege and surprise.  And so it did this time. On Nov. 21, one week before the European Union summit in Vilnius during which Ukraine was supposed to sign an association agreement, its government suspended talks with the EU.

The suspense and excitement were replaced by deep disappointment. As one Ukrainian paper put it the government managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (again). A character in Maxim Gorky’s play “On the Lower Depth” says about a mate who strangles himself: “What a song he’d spoiled”.  This was the closest Ukraine had ever come to crossing the border between Russia and the West.

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