EU Leaders Face Moment Of Reflection Over Ukraine Debacle

[Purveyor]

(Reuters) - European leaders face a session of soul-searching and strategy planning over Ukraine at their year-end summit on Friday when they will discuss why Kiev rejected an EU free trade deal and took a bailout from Russia instead.

As well as weighing Ukraine's decision to turn away and what Europe might have done to prevent it, leaders will debate the message they want to send to swathes of Ukrainians now protesting against President Viktor Yanukovich's move.

They will also have to agree what line to take with Russia, which applied intense political and economic pressure on the former Soviet republic to spurn the EU deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin and the EU are due to hold talks in Brussels in late January.

Asked how the leaders' discussion was likely to go on Friday, one senior official involved in the talks said: "The goal will be to prevent a whole lot of Russia-bashing."

Yanukovich's rejection of the EU deal at a meeting with European leaders in Vilnius last month has already prompted some self-examination, including questions over whether the EU should have offered more money or potential membership to Ukraine as an inducement.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/19/us-eu-ukraine-idUSBRE9BI0S420131219

[dipsydoodle]

1. Not much point in crying over spilt milk.

If they were serious they should've offered more than a billion euros in the first place - that was what Yanukovich turned his back on when they thought he'd agree.

Notwithstanding that there is little if anything the EU could've offered on a par with the reduced gas price.

Potential membership isn't that easy. Would require the agreement of all current member states aside from which their GDP/debt ratio would've blocked the associated compulsory adoption of the euro as currency for donkeys years.