VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russia’s president, deserves the highest medal of Ukraine. He has done more for its European integration in the past few months than any Ukrainian politician has over the past 20 years. He has stopped the country’s directionless drift, consolidated its elite, given it an impetus westward and mobilised European politicians. Never before has Ukraine been so close to signing an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union, a step towards EU membership.At the recent Yalta European Strategy conference, held in the Livadia palace, where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin carved up the map of Europe nearly 70 years ago, geopolitics unfolded in real time and Ukraine was right in the middle of it. “Ukraine is on the final lap, and it must double its efforts and finish off the job…we’ve done it, so can you,” said Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister.The presence of European and American heavyweights, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, contrasted with the absence of Russian diplomats. The Kremlin was represented by Sergei Glaziev, a nationalist-minded economic adviser to Mr Putin, whose deliberately provocative speech consisted of thinly…
