Ukraine: UK and EU 'badly misread' Russia

 

The Ukrainian army was pushed out of the strategic town of Debaltseve by pro-Russian separatists on Thursday

Britain and the European Union have been accused of a "catastrophic misreading" of the mood in the Kremlin in the run-up to the crisis in Ukraine. The House of Lords EU committee claimed Europe "sleepwalked" into the crisis.
The EU had not realised the depth of Russian hostility to its plans for closer relations with Ukraine, it said.
It comes as European Council president Donald Tusk called PM David Cameron to discuss how the EU should respond to ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine.cut..


The report also follows comments from UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a "real and present danger" to three Baltic states.
He was speaking after RAF jets were scrambled to escort two Russian military aircraft seen off the Cornwall coast on Wednesday.
Ill-equipped The committee's report said Britain had not been "active or visible enough" in dealing with the situation in Ukraine.
It blamed Foreign Office cuts, which it said led to fewer Russian experts working there, and less emphasis on analysis.
A similar decline in EU foreign ministries had left them ill-equipped to formulate an "authoritative response" to the crisis, it said.
The report claimed that for too long the EU's relationship with Moscow had been based on the "optimistic premise" that Russia was on a trajectory to becoming a democratic country.
The result, it said, was a failure to appreciate the depth of Russian hostility when the EU opened talks aimed at establishing an "association agreement" with Ukraine in 2013.
The Ukraine crisis began in November 2013 when pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych's government abandoned an EU deal in favour of stronger ties with Russia - prompting mass protests that led to his downfall.
Subsequent unrest in Ukraine's peninsula of Crimea led to its annexation by Russia - which has since been accused of stoking conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the east of the country.
'Unjustifiable and illegal' Committee chairman Lord Tugendhat said: "The lack of robust analytical capacity, in both the UK and the EU, effectively led to a catastrophic misreading of the mood in the run-up to the crisis."
The UK had a particular responsibility to Ukraine because it was one of four signatories to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum which pledged to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity, the committee said.
Neither Britain nor the EU had a strategic response on how to handle Russia for the long term, it added.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said no-one could have predicted the scale of the "unjustifiable and illegal" Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine.
"The blame lies squarely with the pro-Russian separatists, backed by the Russian authorities, not with an Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine which had been under negotiation for more than seven years before Russia decided to illegally invade and then annex part of its neighbour," she said.
"If the Ukrainian people want a closer social, economic and political relationship with the EU, that is for the people of Ukraine to decide, not Russia."

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Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the besieged city of Debaltseve

Sir Andrew Wood, former British ambassador to Russia, agreed with the report's assessment and said it was a Europe-wide and US "misreading".
He called the situation a "dangerous moment" because Russia was in a state of "frozen anarchy".
"What they've done in Ukraine is to begin an adventure; they don't know how to end it. So there is some danger that their frustrations there will overspill into other areas, and the Baltic states have been under pressure from Russia."
'Deep concern' Elsewhere, a Downing Street statement said European Council president Mr Tusk and Mr Cameron had expressed "deep concern" that Russian-backed separatists had continued to attack Debaltseve, despite the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on Sunday.
The statement said both leaders had agreed European member states would need to review the EU's response to the Ukraine crisis as the situation developed, and said the EU should make clear to Russia that pro-Russian rebels must abide by the ceasefire.
The European Council is made up of the heads of state or government of the 28 EU member states and it sets the EU's overall political direction and priorities.
The US has also said it is "deeply troubled" by reports of continued fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Shelling was reported from several areas on Thursday, including around the rebel-held city of Donetsk.