The European Union offered Ukraine a slot in a perpetual holding pattern yesterday, circling the skies of Brussels while waiting for the go-ahead for membership. Ukrainian officials said they were bitterly disappointed. But then they expected too much. To turn up for talks only a week after the Ukrainian Government fell apart and expect to get marks for stability and reform takes the honourable diplomatic tactic of wishful thinking a bit too far.

Ukraine would do better to trumpet the value of what it has been offered. The “association agreement” with the EU could lead quickly to much closer trade and even to that coveted prize, visa-free travel. It is, after all, the biggest gesture towards membership that the country is likely to get from the EU for a long time. Ukraine would also then stand a better chance of persuading Russia that there was no vacuum for it to fill or disillusion with Europe to exploit.

The EU and Nato have both bracketed Ukraine with Georgia in mulling over whether to extend their borders again. The EU did the same with Romania and Bulgaria, treating them almost as a joint application. It would do itself a favour by treating all these countries separately. Ukraine and Georgia are completely different, and so would be the problems of letting them in.

Ukraine's sheer size puts it far beyond the kind of expansion that the EU could begin to consider at the moment, with voters already fed up with enlargement. With a population of 46 million (ten times that of Georgia), it could not just be swept into the mix. It is not only huge, it is torn between its pro-Russian and pro-European halves — the cause, yet again, of the Government's collapse. The EU is right to point out that Ukraine has to resolve its own ambivalence before it is worth cranking up the Brussels machinery even to look at the possibility of membership. Even then, the answer might well be no.

For the EU to let in a new member is a much more complicated decision than for Nato to do so. Turkey, a member of Nato but with only distant hopes of joining the EU, shows why. EU accession of large countries affect the economies, even the population, of every other member, as well as the budget, the voting rules, and the subtle cultural emphasis of a union that is unsure of just those things.

For Nato, in contrast, membership turns on comparatively simple questions of whether the newcomer could bring useful military forces or territory, and of whether existing members would be prepared to defend it, Of course, with Ukraine and Georgia, that now carries all the melodramatic weight of whether Russia would promptly test the commitment.

But the alliance has never been purely military (as its leaders spend ages reminding the world). It has also defined itself as a pact between like-minded countries: an alliance of those on the same side, against those who are hostile. That is where the value of including Georgia and Ukraine might lie. However tortuous that path may seem, it is still easier than EU membership.

Given that Ukraine is not going to get anything firm towards EU membership for a long time, both sides have an incentive to get the most out of yesterday's co-operation pact. It isn't an empty offer, even if it isn't the one that Ukraine wanted.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone