Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who served as France’s defence minister (1988-91) and interior minister (1997-2000) writes in Le Monde that the current crisis could have been averted “if the EU had, in launching its Eastern Partnership in 2009, framed the negotiation of the association agreement with Ukraine compatibly with the objective of the 2003 strategic EU-Russia partnership: creating ‘a single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok.'”