Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

How was Moscow to react? The choice at Vilnius in November 2013 had been pitched by both sides as a strategic turning point. Thanks to the niggardliness of the IMF-EU offer, Moscow had won a significant victory, only for that to be overturned by popular protest and regime change, which, even if it had the support of a considerable fraction of the Ukrainian people, was of dubious legality and was undeniably Western inspired. For Russia to have meekly accepted this outcome would have been worse than if Yanukovych had signed the Association Agreement in the first place. On the night of February 22–23 the Kremlin decided to act. Taking advantage of local protests and activating plans prepared in 2008 to counter a fast-track NATO application, on February 27, 2014, Russian troops in perfunctory disguises seized control of the Crimean peninsula.47 A few days later, to further ramp up the pressure on Kiev, Russia put its muscle behind a separatist uprising in the eastern region of Donetsk.