MY first-hand knowledge of Ukraine was gained mainly through football which does not qualify me as an authority. Nonetheless, there is nothing like the beautiful game for taking you into corners of Europe that might otherwise remain unvisited.

It is wise to come away from these places realising how little you know rather than as an instant expert. Certainly, one of the most educational yet perplexing cities I visited was Donetsk where the football club, the seven-star hotel and just about everything above ground – and, more lucratively, below – had come into the ownership of one man.

While it is possible that Rinat Akhmetov made his fortune through honest toil, there is a considerable body of evidence which disputes this. Certainly, he has become Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch while, since the war of 2014, the club has decamped from Donetsk to various venues, currently Kiev.

When they left Donetsk, half the Ukrainian players decided to stay in solidarity with the newly-proclaimed secession of Donbass. Akhmetov, meanwhile, prospered further through vast contracts with the Ukrainian state. It’s a story which gives a flavour of how complex loyalties are within Ukraine and why all-out war would be indiscriminate in its victims. Which is why it just might not happen.

The unfortunate truth is that the break-up of the Soviet Union did not lead to a chain of fresh-faced new democracies. Most products of post-communism have been corrupt and authoritarian states with nobody in the West asking too many questions, while eager to do business with them.

Nobody really thinks we should be trying to influence events in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan which is recognition that the “sphere is influence” principle still operates. The question of how far it extends is at the core of events around Ukraine. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, there was a triumphalist view that the door was open to the Western (ie American) sphere of influence sweeping all before it.

As Harvard academic and former Defence Under-Secretary Graham Allison wrote: "In 1991, the United States was left economically, militarily, and geopolitically dominant… The US and its allies could welcome new members into NATO, applying to them its Article 5 security guarantee, without thinking about the risks, since the alliance faced no real threat.” Did they think that would continue indefinitely, up to the borders of Russia and maybe also China?

Three decades on, it looks like a naïve assumption. There was always a likelihood of Russia saying so far and no further. I used to wonder about this 20 years ago when dealing with Azerbeijan and Kazakhstan where the Americans were extremely active in promoting their strategic energy interests while never getting close to changing political control. Both sides could live with that. But if they had pushed harder?

Ukraine is different because it is closer to the West and many of its people want to look in that direction. From a Russian perspective, however, the strategic argument is the same. It does not want a politically hostile state, far less a military alliance, on its doorstep. That position can be understood – just as it is in respect of other post-Soviet states I have referred to – even if it cannot be so easily accommodated. There must however be room for diplomacy to find an answer to that conundrum.

Nothing would justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine while the question begged is what we can do about it? Sanctions can be a demonstration of weakness rather than of strength and may inflict a great deal of self-harm while the intended victim makes other arrangements. There is, for example, no shortage of global demand for gas outside western Europe.

I was waiting for the “Munich” jibe to be used in denigration of anyone, notably the Germans, who might advocate continuing diplomacy over war-talk. Unfortunately, it came from the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace. Yet the analogy is false because there is no comparison in either the nature of the threat or the potential response. Mercifully, nobody is talking about sending troops or facing a war of conquest across Europe.

The “sphere of influence” concept has always been imperfect because it implicitly suggests that people and countries which fall within it are left to like or lump not just the government but the system under which they live. That was as crudely unsatisfactory in Latin America as it was in Eastern Europe.

Now, the evolving tragedy of Ukraine demonstrates that it is again time to find accommodations which respect both ambitions and perceived threats before they fester to the point of troops massing at borders. Enlightened, open-minded diplomacy can achieve a lot more than rhetoric or sanctions. We need more of it and not less.

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