Ukraine is surely stuck in the middle, from their election choice, and they know it:
The Ukrainian authorities led by Yanukovych have abandoned the aim of his pro-Western predecessor Viktor Yushchenko to join NATO, with Yanukovych pledging to pursue a policy of neutrality.
Ukraine's parliament late Thursday passed in the final reading a law formally establishing a non-aligned status for the country.
Secretary of State Clinton has left an escape route for Ukraine:
"Ukraine is a sovereign and independent country that has the right to choose its own alliances and NATO's door remains open," Clinton said at a meeting with her Ukrainian counterpart Kostyantyn Gryshchenko.
"But it's up to Ukraine to decide whether or not you wish to pursue that or any other course for your own security interest," she added.
How NATO's door can remain open while Kiev allows a non-NATO state like Russia to have a base is beyond me, but nice thought anyway. Who knows? Maybe NATO changes that rule or Ukraine sells the base area to Russia and it becomes another Russia enclave but at least isn't Ukrainian territory.
Still, whether or not Ukraine can join NATO, we need to keep tugging Ukraine westward, because Russia sees neutrality in Kiev as only a stopping point on the way to anschluss with Mother Russia:
The stakes are very high in Ukraine, and not just for Ukrainians who cherish their hard-won independence and wish to live out their “European vocation.” Russia without Ukraine is a power, but not a great power. For Ukraine is not only, as John Paul II described it, “the frontier and gate between East and West,” and thus a land rich in possibilities for cultural encounter. Its considerable landmass is also the buffer between Russia and NATO, and thus its independence is a deterrent to any efforts over the medium and long haul to reassemble the old Warsaw Pact by various means.
We need to keep tugging Ukraine west even if we have no idea whether we can move them at all for decades to come. At least we can keep them from moving east.
Even if we don't like it that Ukraine is neutral, there are worse things from our point of view (not to mention Ukrainians) than neutrality.
