Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

In Kiev there was outrage. “We could not contain our emotions, it was unacceptable,” Ukraine’s permanent representative for NATO told Reuters. When his country turned to Europe for help, they “spat on us. . . . [W]e are apparently not Poland, apparently we are not on a level with Poland. . . . [T]hey are not letting us in really, we will be standing at the doors. We’re nice but we’re not Poles.”41 Fortunately for Kiev, or so it seemed, Moscow had an alternative plan. On November 21, 2013, Putin offered, and Yanukovych accepted, a gas contract on concessionary terms and a $15 billion loan. The condition was that Ukraine, like Armenia, would join the Eurasian Customs Union.