Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday tried to defuse his country’s crisis with two moves – repealing the deeply unpopular anti-protest laws and accepting the resignation of his Prime Minister.

He believes that the two-pronged move will appease both the opposition party – who reviles former PM Mykola Azarov and the protestors, who saw (rightly so) the anti-protest legislation as a serious impingement and violation of their rights.

The nation of 45 million is largely pushing for the removal of the government after the passing of the protest law which saw two months of largely peaceful protests turn into all out street rioting.

But the President is ignoring one crucial factor. The people of Ukraine will not be appeased because the popular majority of people wanted to see closer ties with Europe, eventually aspiring to be full EU members. But instead, he turned to Russia for a bailout, once again pulling the Ukraine into Russia’s sphere of influence. But the Ukrainian people also have a mammoth of a figure to rally behind now – Vitali Klitschko – the former boxing heavyweight champion of the world.

It is ironic to think that here in Malta, we are trying to flog EU passports to third-country nationals, when a nation of 45 million is clamouring to get hold of one. Of course, not many of these people would be able to afford the €650,000 price tag of a passport and the supposed investment that has to go with it.

One also wonders what the visit that Yanukovych was going to pay to Malta would have involved. In the end, he cancelled it – stating that he had to “concentrate” on matters at home. But it does raise the question – when one puts it into context – of whether the passport scheme would have been discussed.

Europe has continued to parlay with the Ukraine in an effort to ‘encourage’ the President to step down, but that does not look likely to happen as the two sides – the protestors and the police – get more and more violent.

A solution looks unlikely. Ukraine was once the darling of the EU – a country that had overturned an autocratic government in a peaceful revolution. It worked hard to move closer to Europe and away from the East, but in the space of a few short years, it has gone the other way and seems to be crashing and burning fast.

In previous leading articles, we had speculated on the possibility of Arab Spring style revolutions spreading and perhaps even taking hold in Europe. There have been times when we might have thought so – the demonstrations in Greece and Spain – for months on end, could have tuned into what we are witnessing in the Ukraine right now. Thankfully, they did not. But they could easily do so.

People are beginning to realise that with enough numbers, and that with enough persistence, they can overthrow despotic governments. After all, we only have to go back a few hundred years to recall the French revolution – which gave rise to the phrase “ liberte, egalite et fraternite”. But at what cost?