Ukraine

Three meetings to discuss Ukraine are scheduled for the week beginning on Monday, April 14. The first meeting is of EU foreign ministers at Luxembourg on April 14. They are supposed to consider further sanctions on Russia. The next day the EU defence ministers are going to meet. The third meeting in Geneva on April 17 will bring together US, Russia, EU, and EU.

While President Putin has conveyed the message of tough military action, it is highly unlikely that he will order his troops to invade the majority ethnic Russian region of Crimea. Military brinkmanship can be seen as an attempt to force the West to include Russia as a partner in settlement of the crisis.

Russia has signalled its intentions in Crimea. With neither the US nor Europe willing to be engaged in another crisis in Eastern Europe, the Russian strategy would be to re-enter the scenario not as a junior partner of the West but as a recognized primary power in the region, without whom Ukraine cannot be stabilised.

Ukraine has resisted Russian attempts to draw it into a closer political and economic embrace and has instead explored a closer association with the EU, NATO and even China. Recent developments indicate a turnaround in the Ukrainian attitude and may portend a closer relationship with Russia and the CIS states.

The dispute over the price hike for Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine was settled on January 4, 2006 , when Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukraine 's state oil and gas company Naftogaz reached an agreement on the supply of Russian natural gas to Ukraine through a joint-venture company Rosukrenergo. It focused international attention on Russia 's current policy shift and the mechanisms of its implementation.