Eastern Europe: where the Iron Curtain drops again

Republished by THE GLOCAL The world has witnessed the protest in Ukraine to come through as one that successfully, not least strenuously, toppled the Russophone president Viktor Yanukovych (at the time of writing, he has been impeached in parliament and fled to the Crimea, a peninsula Nikita Khrushchev gave to Ukraine in 1954 as a friendly gesture) in a climatic showdown over the last week. Known internationally as the Euromaiden, the two-month-long protest and occupation ended up in violent clashes and bloodshed when Yanukovych decided to throw a far-reaching EU trade deal into the trash bin, opting for stronger ties with Russia. Ukraine, not too much unlike its neighbour Belarus, is naturally deemed to fall under the orbit of Kremlin given their apparent historical and cultural ties (Putin himself called Ukraine a "praternal state"). Connections with the European Union, on the other hand, are questionable to say the least. The EU has refrained from making a serious