Europe has more potential rift lines than national dishes. To oversimplify, in past crises the division has often been between flinty northerners who resent being made to pay for ever more costly European schemes bail-outs, stimulus packages and so on and spendthrift southerners. Over Ukraine, by contrast, the main fissure has been between east and west. Eastern hawks, notably in Poland and the Baltics, fear that anything other than an unambiguous defeat of the Russian invasion will encourage Vladimir Putin to attack them next. In their eyes the traditional powers that dominate the eu are showing insufficient steel in their support of a neighbour under attack. France, Germany and Italy, they mutter, are complacent about the threat Europe faces, and would rather chit-chat with Mr Putin than stand up to him. Do you think that European unity is at the risk of falling ?

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