For $15 billion in loans, a steep discount off Russia’s regular gas price this freezing winter and who knows what other undisclosed terms, Putin on Tuesday cemented his pact with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It’s the payoff for Yanukovych’s decision to turn Ukraine back east into Putin’s sphere of influence— and reject the painstakingly negotiated accession agreement to the European Union he was supposed to sign a couple weeks ago. Der Spiegel calls this Ukrainian maneuver the capstone of Putin’s “most successful year yet.”

Of course, there’s the matter of the 45 million Ukrainians themselves, who overwhelmingly oppose this sellout by their president and have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to demand a future for Ukraine in the West.

In doing so, they’ve once again made poor Ukraine, with its disastrous economy, toxic corruption and dangerous proximity to a Russia that’s never fully given up imperial claims to its territory, into a geopolitical fault line, pitting the crass ambition (and attractive payouts) of Putinism against the nobler sentiments (and tough-love economic prescriptions) of the European Union and the IMF.

Nobody on either side of this fight is under any illusions about the broader stakes involved.