International financiers will say, without wanting to be quoted, that Ukraine is already, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. They do not like the D-word, default, though that is clearly on their mind. Ukrainian officials like the word still less, smacking as it does of national humiliation. But the taboo was broken in recent days, when a senior IMF official, Marek Belka, director of the fund's European department, was quoted in the Ukrainian press as rejecting that idea. Which, in many Ukrainian minds, only made the prospect more real.
D-day – in almost every sense – could come as early as next Saturday when Ukraine has to pay its next instalment for Russian gas deliveries under the agreement painfully negotiated in January. It is grimly forecast that Kiev will not be able to pay, so triggering a new cut-off.
And Ukraine isn't in NATO yet.
Russia won't fail to exploit this. Ukrainians best buckle in because this could get rough for them.
