UK guilty of 'catastrophic misreading' of Ukraine crisis, Lords report claims

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1. EU and Britain 'sleepwalked' into Ukraine crisis: UK lawmakers

http://news.yahoo.com/eu-britain-sleepwalked-ukraine-crisis-uk-lawmakers-092923415.html

EU and Britain 'sleepwalked' into Ukraine crisis: UK lawmakers

LONDON (Reuters) - <snip>

In their report, lawmakers from the upper house of Britain's parliament heaped criticism on Moscow, which they said had been gradually turning away from Europe and had misread Ukraine's appetite for a trade deal with the EU.

But the House of Lords' EU Sub-Committee on External Affairs reserved some of its harshest criticism for the EU and Britain, saying they had made a series of errors in the run-up to the crisis and were partly to blame for the situation unraveling.

"There has been a strong element of 'sleepwalking' into the current crisis, with Member States being taken by surprise by events in Ukraine," the report said, saying the EU's absence of political oversight over trade talks with Kiev had been glaring.

"A loss of collective analytical capacity has weakened Member States' ability to read the political shifts in Russia and to offer an authoritative response," it added, saying the EU had failed to appreciate "the exceptional nature" of Ukraine.

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