Stopping off in Ukraine today on the eve of a crucial Nato summit, the US president, George W. Bush, is bringing a message for this geopolitically strategic country that is drastically different from that taken in 1991 by his father during a presidential visit amid the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union.

Fearing chaos would follow the breakup of the Soviet Union if newly independent republics sank into ethnic conflicts seen in the Balkans, George H.W. Bush then delivered a blunt warning in a speech in Kiev, saying the US would not support "suicidal nationalism".