The emergency European Union summit on Monday to address the crisis will find it easier to agree on how to reward and reassure Georgia and Ukraine than on whether to punish Russia.

The gathering was called by France, as holder of the EU presidency, before Russia turned up the heat on Tuesday by formally recognising the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia . It is even more useful now. It will be helped by the chill directed towards Russia by its usual allies — and the most important part of this is China’s appalled reaction.

But where the original purpose of the EU summit — humanitarian help — was easy territory, the 27 countries will find it harder to agree now that the agenda includes punishment. As it does since yesterday, when Bernard Kouchner, France’s Foreign Minister, said that “sanctions are being considered and many other means as well”.

He’s got a bit ahead of himself, although the crisis has been good for President Sarkozy’s attempt to retrieve a leading role for France. Sarkozy’s brokering of the Russia-Georgia ceasefire — even if it was immediately infringed by Russia — remains the only intervention that has touched the Kremlin (even if the language that President Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, used to Sarkozy in the meeting shocked Western delegations, officials say). It has also united the 27 EU members, making agreement a real possibility.

But the White House said yesterday that it was premature to say whether the US would consider sanctions. Within the EU, a tough line will also have to overcome Germany’s objections, although its view that the EU should try hard to avoid provoking Russia is getting hard to hold.

The most likely outcome of Monday’s meeting is a gift basket of trade, aid, summits, partnerships and the like, offered to Georgia and Ukraine. The EU’s aim is to persuade them that there are rewards from being close that stop short of membership. That is not a con trick, it is a necessary halfway house. If the EU had been better in the past at devising such rewards it might have been more adroit in dealing with Romania and Bulgaria, two countries given full membership before they were ready.

Ukrainian politicians made clear to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, on Wednesday, that they wanted all the badges of friendship that were going, while cautioning that they thought Russia wanted to pick a fight over the Crimea or Black Sea ships and that the EU and US had to be careful not to give it any spurious excuse.

Whatever the EU decides on Monday, the most important pressure on Russia may come from China. For years it has joined Russia in defending the notion of territorial integrity, saying that sovereign borders were inviolable. Now it sees Moscow jettison this principle to both countries’ potential cost. Russia’s sour myopia may have gained it two tiny scraps of land but lost it its main ally, and perhaps, in the future, some of its own troubled provinces.

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