NED Banned in Russia: Will Color Revolutions Continue?

National Endowment's president Carl Gershman's crystal ball foretold Ukraine becoming the stage on which the Cold War would reemerge. 

He certainly foreshadowed the critical importance of Ukraine as a geopolitical pawn in the Eastern European blocks of the Grand Chessboard. Subsequent events though have reduced his claims to a mere hysterical and anti-Russian invective.

Gershman describes Ukraine as both a victim of Russia's current wave of imperialism and historical insensitivity:

Ukraine is the biggest prize, and there Russia’s bullying has been particularly counter-productive. In addition to the usual economic threats and trade sanctions, including a ban on the import of Ukrainian chocolates, Putin offended Ukrainians during a state visit in July, saying that they and the Russians were a “single people,” and that the Ukranians had flourished under Soviet rule — totally ignoring the famine of the early 1930s that Ukrainians call the Holodomor, or “extermination by hunger.”  

If Putin's claiming that Russians and Ukranians are a "single people" was both insulting and implied his ignoring the brutal famine noted above, then why following the Maidan revolution and overthrow of Yanukovich have over 600,000 Ukranians sought refuge in Russia? Why didn't they act in accordance with Gershman's observation that:

 Its (sic Russia's)post-communist neighbors prefer the relative dynamism of Europe — with all its debt and growth problems — to Russia’s stagnant economy, and they have no interest in sharply raising tariffs, which joining the protectionist Eurasian Customs Union would require.

Also, this many Ukranians fleeing on this scale to Russia further suggests they don't see Russia as an invading force or a mortal threat.

This article was published less than two months before Victor Yanukovic made the fateful decision to accept Russia's financial aid offer instead of accepting "associate membership" with the EU. The author of the op-ed claimed that during the post cold war Era that "the United States  was "conspicuously on the sidelines." Of course this view suggests that while the U.S. slept, a resurgent Russia proceeded to redraw the Iron Curtain under the auspices of the benign sounding "Eurasian Economic Union or Eurasian Customs Union."

Was Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt "conspicuously on the sidelines" during their infamous phone conversation on the eve of the Maidan revolution?

Nuland's comments and masses of Ukranians fleeing to Russia invert Gershman's claim about who prefers the E.U. Both Nuland's discounting the E.U.'s influence as evidenced by her stating "Fuck the E.U," and the Ukranians eschewing the E.U. by seeking refuge in Russia indicate the "relative dynamism of Europe" ain't what it used to be.  

Now that Putin and the Russian Duma have legally banned the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from operating in Russia, maybe the NED could devote more time and energy to reinvigorating the "relative dynamism of Europe." Maybe they can fix Greece.