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The ballyhoo over Ukraine’s suspended decision to join the “European family” is reaching a climax. Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych is due to address the EU leaders in the Lithuanian capital on Friday, November 28th, to set forth his stance on the issue that’s been much-discussed in recent months. Moscow has repeatedly said it respects any choice by the sovereign state, but has warned that Russia will have to abolish the preferential trade terms for Ukraine, if Kyiv signs the Association Agreement with the EU. The point is that this kind of agreement provides for a free flow of goods between Ukraine and the EU countries, which may deliver a painful blow to the Russian production sector, which Moscow will have to protect under the Customs Union provisions. But Europe has been stubbornly ignoring this understandable and absolutely transparent position, the one that President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly pointed out. Instead, the EU keeps insisting that Moscow resorts to blackmail and pressure to allegedly block Ukraine’s striving for joining the civilized world.

Meanwhile, there is little, if any, ethics in western politicians’ arguments, probably because they hate to admit they have been defeated on the strategic East-European operations theatre. Therefore, they resort to questionable political means. A request has been posted on the US presidential administration website urging that harsh sanctions be slapped on Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych. The current EU chair, Lithuania, has drafted a tough anti-Russian declaration expressly for the forthcoming summit.

But a Member of the Russian Federation Council’s International Affairs Committee, Igor Morozov, says he is certain that the decision that Kyiv has made recently opens up fresh opportunities for Ukraine.

“Now Ukraine stands a good chance of joining the Customs Union and Common Economic Space and becoming an effective partner of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It can then join the Eurasian Economic Commission. But in case of Ukraine’s integration with the EU, their dividends and profits would be incomparable to those it would get in the former case”.

The current rallies of pro-EU integration protesters in Kyiv are the manifestation of the very same democratic process that western ideologists are calling for. By the way, those who feel that Ukraine should start moving towards the Customs Union have also taken to the streets. But their views, as well as Ukraine’s enormous losses that economists have repeatedly pointed to and that Kyiv will inevitably suffer if it chooses to pull out of the CIS have been ignored for some reason or other. But then, it is obvious that the West needs Ukraine as a buffer between the EU and Russia, rather than as an EU fully-fledged member-state. That is why western statements supporting the pro-integration protesters come in showers. What’s more, entire landing parties of European emissaries arrive in Kyiv to call for sticking to the path of “prosperity and freedom”.

Any EU scenario includes “Maidan” protests, says the Head of the Ukrainian Institute for Analysis and Management of Policy, Ruslan Bortnik.

“If Yanukovych had signed the Association Agreement, Ukraine would have seen “Maidan” protests next January, when hundreds of thousands of people would have been made redundant, and social benefits would have shrunk. But European politicians throw their weight behind the demonstrators and thus prop up the protest movement. Ukraine also suffers financial pressure. The main – nonpublic – pressure element is support for the mass media, public and radical movements that lobby for the adoption of certain government decisions”.

Kyiv has by no means given up its association plans for the European Union. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov says he hopes to take up the issue next year. But Ukraine should decide on the form of integration. It is preferable that Russia take part in the consultations in question, since Russia has had close and long-standing ties with Ukraine, and these ties could be placed in jeopardy. Vladimir Putin has said recently that this kind of trilateral format will serve as a litmus test to show the Europeans’ true goals. Everybody seems to have been fed up with the non-stop expression of concern about the future of the Ukrainian people. It’s time for everyone to remove their mask. As practice shows, EU persuasions have nothing to do with actual concern about Ukraine. Nor is Europe willing to invest huge funds to bring Ukrainian standards in line with the European ones. And last but not least, high EU officials have said they are not rejecting trilateral talks, since in that case they would deny Ukraine a single chance of signing the Association Agreement. Now it’s for Kyiv to make the final choice, which is, indeed, a pretty hard thing to do.