Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Again, we are getting the completely one-sided take on this. It is absolutely true that the demonstrations in Kiev were partly motivated by the corruption of the Yanukovych regime. Unquestionably, it was a corrupt and rotten regime. It is unquestionable that many Ukrainians - in certain parts of the country at least - may look towards Europe as against Russia but that is not the end of the story.

The other side of the story is that Europe knows damn well that there are significant minorities which would look to Russia and that any expansion of the European Union or NATO would be seen as a direct provocation and threat to those minorities. Do not tell me the EU-NATO strategists do not understand these things and that they are stupid or blind to them. They know damn well that it represents a provocation and that Russia has traditionally seen states and places like Crimea as buffer states against rivalry from the West.

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