Europeans souring on Ukraine, Georgia: Paul Taylor | Reuters 2009!!

«Feted just a couple of years ago as heroes of democratic revolutions, the leaders of Ukraine and Georgia have fallen from grace among European policymakers.

While there is scant sympathy in Europe for Russia's rough treatment of the two former Soviet republics, European Union officials have been exasperated by the behavior of the governments in Kiev and Tbilisi.

In private, many EU policymakers blame Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for igniting last August's disastrous war with Russia by launching an attack on rebels in breakaway South Ossetia that gave Moscow a pretext to send in the tanks.

And they accuse Ukraine's feuding leaders of exacerbating the current gas crisis with Moscow by undermining each other's negotiations, breaking undertakings to the EU on the smooth transit of gas and dealing with murky intermediaries.

Some charge neo-conservatives in the United States, who have campaigned actively to get both countries into the NATO military alliance, with goading them into conflict with the Kremlin.

'The neo-con agenda in that region has been a disaster for Europe,' said an EU foreign policy official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.»