Ukraine hosts key Western allies after loss of Crimea

Ukraine hosts two vital allies today amid Western efforts to cement Kiev's leaning away from Moscow in a Cold War-style struggle for the ex-Soviet nation that has already seen Russia take Crimea.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be the first leader from the G7 group of top industrialised powers to meet interim president Oleksandr Turchynov in Kiev since last month's fall of a pro-Kremlin regime that had ultimately rejected closer ties to the West.

Turchynov starts off by hosting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier -- his economic power playing a decisive role in formulating Europe's response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's increasingly belligerent stance.

The show of diplomatic solidarity may play an important psychological role in Kiev as it faces new rounds of pressure by Russia that include open threats to throw Ukraine's wheezing economy into convulsion by raising its gas rates and demanding colossal payments for disputed debts it could ill afford.

The biggest such signal from Europe came yesterday with the signing in Brussels of the very agreement on closer EU-Ukraine relations whose rejection by the Moscow-backed regime sparked three months of deadly protests that led to its February 22 fall.

The pact puts Ukraine on a firmer footing toward EU membership which the protesters -- tired of corruption and Russian domination -- sought and which Putin feared because of the doom it spelt for his dream of recreating a Kremlin-run empire of a post-Soviet state.

The political deal should be followed months later by an economic agreement permanently lifting trade barriers and requiring Ukraine to undertake structural changes that could kickstart two decades of stuttering growth.

But Ukraine is unlikely to hear its calls for US and EU military support answered despite the hourly advances Russian troops and pro-Kremlin militia are making on the rebel Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.