EU learns lessons a year after start of Ukraine crisis

When Ukraine pulled out of its association agreement with the European Union a year ago, kicking off its revolution, it took Brussels by surprise.

Twelve months later the EU is still learning bitter lessons about geopolitics and Russian aggression, experts say.

“We walked into a fight almost without realising it,” Vivien Pertusot, an expert at the IFRI think-tank in Brussels, told AFP.

“Even the experts, the universities that follow this closely were surprised.”

The Ukraine-EU association agreement was supposed to be the culmination of long efforts to bring Kiev back in from the cold, only for pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych to pull the plug on November 21, last year in favour of closer ties with Moscow.

There then came weeks of protests, the flight of Yanukovych after dozens of protesters were massacred in February, and the annexation of Crimea by Russia the following March, while Brussels stood by largely helpless.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine between pro-Kremlin rebels and government forces then began in April and has since claimed more than 4,300 lives, including nearly 300 on a Malaysian Airlines plane shot down over the region.