The escalating crisis in Ukraine has focused attention on a country torn by ethnic tensions and a violent history, which has also been largely ignored by the West. Here, a political observer who knows the region well argues that a long-term strategy of EU membership offers the only route to a stable future During the time I was working as Tony Blair’s special adviser on European policy, I visited Ukraine half a dozen or so times as part of a regular dialogue between the offices of the British Prime Minister and the Ukrainian President in the era before the 2005 “Orange Revolution”. The fact that an adviser and not a Minister was the leading British envoy was, in truth, part of the Ukraine problem. Ukraine is a big, strategically placed country covering huge swathes of t