BRUSSELS — A firm course change in Ukraine — westward and away from Moscow — would have momentous consequences for the balance of power in Europe.
The move would propel the continent’s second-largest country into the orbit of the 28-nation European Union rather than Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
Taken to its logical conclusion, Ukraine’s farm fields, mines and factories, now mainly oriented toward the Russian market, could eventually chiefly produce for the EU — the world’s largest single economic bloc, extending as far west as the British Isles.
Its capital city of Kiev, known as the mother of Russia’s cities, could one day have denser links with Rome, Paris and London than with St. Petersburg, Smolensk or Moscow.
The country’s military, one of Europe’s largest, might join the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
Ukraine “has the potential to really boost the EU’s engine in a way that no other new member could — with the exception of Turkey,” said Amanda Paul, a policy analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels think tank. “Ukraine’s new generation of youth are well educated and therefore needed by Europe, which has an aging population.”
Incorporating Ukraine and its 46 million people into the EU would make the bloc a player in Central Asia and the Caucasus, put EU-Russian relations on a much closer footing and bring about an internal EU power shift that would strengthen the influence of Poland and other Eastern European countries at the expense of southern Europe, said Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe, another think tank.
“It’s a pretty big strategic shift we’re talking about,” Techau said.
With the disappearance of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, chances appear to have brightened for Ukraine to sign the formal association agreement with the EU that he spurned in November in favor of a bailout loan from Russia a month later.
That EU deal, in the long run, could prove a bonanza for the resource-rich republic that was one of the former Soviet Union’s industrial dynamos.
In the short term, however, it would be painful for many sectors of Ukraine’s economy and would commit the EU and other international organizations like the International Monetary Fund to spending billions in aid.
Present-day Ukraine, Techau said, is a “basket case economically.”
Geoffrey Pridham, an emeritus professor who studies post-communist democratization at Bristol University in Britain, said three factors — Ukraine’s dire economic situation, the stirrings of pro-Russian separatist sentiment in the east of the country, and Kremlin meddling — could derail any effort to bring Ukraine closer to the EU.
“It really depends on what Russia decides to do,” said Kataryna Wolczuk, associate professor of international studies at the University of Birmingham. “We haven’t heard the last word from Russia.”
The EU’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, went to Kiev this week to feel out the situation.
Paul, who has been following events in Ukraine for a decade, said for the westward-facing scenario to become a reality, the EU must get tougher with Putin.
“The ultimate question is, is EU ready to tackle Russia? They need to stop being so cowardly,” Paul said.
She said the high hopes many Ukrainians are vesting in the European Union may ultimately be dashed.
Lagging Ukraine
According to the World Bank, average per capita income in 2012 had Ukraine paling in comparison with the European Union’s largest economies:
Germany: $41,863
France: $39,772
Ukraine: $3,867
