A hard Dutch kick

IN November 2013 Viktor Yanukovych, then the president of Ukraine, succumbed to Russian pressure and renounced an association agreement with the European Union that he and his predecessors had spent six years negotiating. Many Ukrainians thought their country’s best hope for transforming itself from a corrupt gangster state into an orderly democracy (or, as they put it, a “normal country”) had been sacrificed on the orders of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Thousands set up camp on Kiev’s Maidan, chanting “Ukraine is Europe”. Police attacked, touching off a cycle of protest and violence that ended in Mr Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, a new government—and the signing of the Ukraine-EU agreement.Mr Putin then sent troops into Ukraine to win back Russian influence by stealth and force. He succeeded in seizing Crimea, splitting off a few rebel areas and embittering Ukrainians’ once-warm feelings towards Russia. Yet the Ukraine-EU association agreement is in trouble again (see ). This time the sticking-point is the Netherlands, the only one of the EU’s 28 members that has not ratified it.