Russia's Vladimir Putin faces delicate balancing act on Ukraine Putin's strategic options have narrowed as the crisis in Ukraine has intensified Last week, Vladimir Putin looked like he had won another game of geopolitical chess, with Ukraine aborting a plan to sign an association agreement with the EU - in large part thanks to the Russian president's warnings about the dire economic consequences of such a step. A few days later - after a wave of protests in Kiev and elsewhere that are undermining the government of Viktor Yanukovich, on whom Russia depends on to pull Ukraine back into its orbit - and Mr Putin has a dilemma. Moscow now finds itself trying to hammer out an agreement containing enough economic sweeteners to keep Mr Yanukovich from swaying back towards the EU but not so generous that it could be exploited by Ukraine - and low-key enough that it will not be seen as Russian meddling in its neighbour's affairs. Political analysts critical of the Kremlin say Mr Putin has been reduced to making only tactical moves. "There is no strategy," said Yevgeny Gontmakher, an economist and former adviser to Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister. He added that Russian offers for more financial aid to Kiev would be "no more than a bet." Officials and analysts friendly to the Kremlin insist such a "bet" would be driven by purely economic considerations: a Ukraine economically integrated with the EU would trigger a flood of inferior Ukrainian products on the Russian market, they claim, and harm Russian industry. But Mr Putin himself has given clear indications that, for him, Ukraine is a deeply political question. In July he visited Ukraine with Kirill I, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, to commemorate the day 1,025 years ago when a Kievan prince adopted Orthodox Christianity as the state religion and ordered his subjects to be baptised - an event also seen as one of the founding moments of Kievan Rus, the first Russian state. Mr Putin invoked the "unity" of the Russian and Ukrainian people and said that, as joint spiritual heirs of the baptism, "in this sense we are, without doubt, one people." That view is widely shared in Russia. In an opinion poll conducted in October by the Levada Center, the country's most independent polling organisation, 61 per cent of respondents said they did not consider Ukraine "abroad." The poll has been conducted repeatedly since 2001 and the result has been largely stable. "Ukraine is an artificial state," said Oleg Nosov, a bank clerk in Moscow. In fact, the east should be part of Russia and the west should be part of Poland. Such views are common even among Russian government officials, although those who express them are eager to clarify that this by no means indicates a desire to annex Russia's smaller neighbour. Even with a sizeable Russian-speaking segment of the population, however, most Ukrainians say their country is, and must be, a separate, independent entity - and view their gigantic neighbour as a threat. With this complex historical relationship as a backdrop, Ukraine's recent wavering between the EU and Russia and Mr Yanukovich's manoeuvres to extract maximum benefits from both sides have created a growing mutual distrust. On Wednesday, talks between Igor Shuvalov, Russia's first deputy prime minister, and Yury Boiko, a Ukrainian deputy minister, did not yield immediate results. When receiving the Ukrainian delegation, Mr Medvedev mentioned the possibility of new joint projects with Russian investment in aircraft component manufacturing and the space industry. A strategic agreement with Russia now would be sensitive for the crowd in the square in Kiev Sergei Markov, deputy director, Plekhanov economic university While any help is welcome for Ukraine's struggling economy, such projects are unlikely to provide the short-term liquidity Kiev needs. The Ukrainian government has come to Russia with a wishlist, including a discount on gas. But officials in Moscow insist that this can only happen if Ukraine commits to joining the Customs Union, Russia's envisaged economic bloc, which they say Mr Yanukovich is not ready to do. One proposal has been for Russia and Ukraine to sign a "strategic agreement" as a compromise step and a way of building trust. But the Kremlin believes this is more likely to anger the Ukrainian opposition and hasten Mr Yanukovich's departure. "It is impossible to sign such a strategic agreement within the next couple of weeks because it will not be good for Mr Yanukovich," said Sergei Markov, deputy director of the Plekhanov economic university in Moscow and a former member of parliament for Mr Putin's United Russia party. A strategic agreement with Russia now would be sensitive for the crowd in the square in Kiev. That leaves Moscow with dangling more money. Two sources close to the government said on Wednesday that the Russian government was offering Kiev a loan of "at least $10bn." "It is likely that Mr Putin will be able to promise some credit," says Mr Markov.