Russian President Vladimir Putin has won an important foreign policy victory with the decision by Ukraine to suspend talks on an association agreement with the European Union. Putin countered the EU offer with threats and blandishments of his own. While Ukrainian officials insist that the door remains open, there is no mistaking Kiev's decision to cast its lot with Russia.
Association status is the EU's way of building ties with countries short of membership. The EU negotiates a framework agreement with a third country that typically focuses on economic, trade, political, social or security ties. Free trade agreements with nonmember states are association agreements.
Ukraine first voiced a desire to conclude some sort of association agreement with the EU in 1994, and various negotiations have been held since then. Talks on a free trade agreement began in 2008, and the next year, Ukraine was identified as one of the six post-Soviet states that would join "the Eastern Partnership" with the EU. This concept was intended to provide a framework for discussion of contentious issues without having to join the EU. In addition to facilitating the resolution of these problems, the Eastern Partnership would extend EU influence to the east, and help reorient those former Soviet states to the West, lessening Russian sway over those governments. The Ukraine association agreement was to have been signed at an EU summit this week in Lithuania.